llowing purport:--My
lords, I am ashamed that there should be any necessity of opposing in
this assembly a bill like that which is now before us; a bill crowded
with absurdities, which no strength of eloquence can exaggerate, nor
any force of reason make more evident.

This bill, my lords, is, however, the first proof that our new
ministers have given of their capacity for the task which they have
undertaken; this is a specimen of their sagacity, and is designed by
them as an instance of the gentle methods by which the expenses of the
government are hereafter to be levied upon the people. The nation
shall no longer see its manufactures subjected to imposts, nor the
fruits of industry taken from the laborious artificer; but drunkenness
shall hereafter supply what has hitherto been paid by diligence and
traffick; the restraints of vice shall be taken away, the barriers of
virtue and religion broken, and an universal licentiousness shall
overspread the land, that the schemes of the ministry may be executed.

What are the projects, my lords, that are to be pursued by such means,
it is not my present purpose to inquire: it is not necessary to add
any aggravations to the present charge, or to examine what has been
the former conduct, or what will be the future actions of men who lie
open by their present proposal to the most atrocious accusations; who
are publickly endeavouring the propagation of the most pernicious of
all vices, who are laying poison in the way of their countrymen,
poison by which not only the body, but the mind is contaminated; who
are attempting to establish by a law a practice productive of all the
miseries to which human nature is incident; a practice which will at
once disperse diseases and sedition, and promote beggary and
rebellion.

This, my lords, is the expedient by which the acuteness of our
ministry proposes to raise the supplies of the present year, and by
this they hope to convince the nation that they are qualified for the
high trusts to which they are advanced; and that they owe their
exaltation only to the superiority of their abilities, the extent of
their knowledge, and the maturity of their experience: by this
masterstroke of policy they hope to lay for their authority a firm and
durable foundation, and to possess themselves, by this happy
contrivance, at once of the confidence of the crown, and the
affections of the people.

But, my lords, I am so little convinced of their abilities