honest commerce, by which all may be gainers, to a game by which the greatest number must certainly be losers.

The lotteries, my lords, which former ministers have proposed, have always been censured by those that saw their nature and their tendency; they have been considered as legal cheats, by which the ignorant and the rash are defrauded, and the subtle and avaricious often enriched; they have been allowed to divert the people from trade, and to alienate them from useful industry. A man who is uneasy in his circumstances, and idle in his disposition, collects the remains of his fortune, and buys tickets in a lottery; retires from business; indulges himself in laziness; and waits, in some obscure place, the event of his adventure. Another, instead of employing his stock in trade, rents a garret, and makes it his business, by false intelligence and chimerical alarms, to raise and sink the price of tickets alternately, and takes advantage of the lies which he has himself invented.

Such, my lords, is the traffick that is produced by this scheme of getting money; nor were these inconveniencies unknown to the present ministers in the time of their predecessors, whom they never ceased to pursue with the loudest clamours, whenever the exigencies of the government reduced them to a lottery.

If I, my lords, might presume to recommend to our ministers the most probable method of raising a large sum, for the payment of the troops of the electorate, I should, instead of the tax and lottery now proposed, advise them to establish a certain number of licensed wheelbarrows, on which the laudable trade of thimble and button might be carried on for the support of the war, and shoeboys might contribute to the defence of the house of Austria by raffling for apples.

Having now, my lords, examined, with the utmost candour, all the reasons which have been offered in defence of the bill, I cannot conceal the result of my

inquiry. The arguments have had so little effect upon my understanding, that, as every man judges of others by himself, I cannot believe that they have any influence even upon those that offer them; and therefore I am convinced that this bill must be the result of considerations which have been hitherto concealed, and is intended to promote designs which are never to be discovered by the authors before their execution.

With regard to these motives and designs, however artfully concealed, every lord in this house is at liberty to offer his conjectures.

When I consider, my lords, the tendency of this bill, I find it calculated only for the propagation of diseases, the suppression of industry, and the destruction of mankind. I find it the most fatal engine that ever was pointed at a people; an engine by which those who are not killed will be disabled, and those who preserve their limbs will be deprived of their senses.

This bill, therefore, appears to be designed only to thin the ranks of mankind, and to disburthen the world of the multitudes that inhabit it, and is perhaps the strongest proof of political sagacity that our new ministers have yet exhibited. They well know, my lords, that they are universally detested, and that, whenever a Briton is destroyed, they are freed from an enemy; they have therefore opened the floodgates of gin upon the nation, that, when it is less numerous, it may be more easily governed.

Other ministers, my lords, who had not attained to so great a knowledge in the art of making war upon their country, when they found their enemies clamorous and bold, used to awe them with prosecutions and penalties, or destroy them like burglers with prisons and with gibbets. But every age, my lords, produces some improvement; and every nation, however degenerate, gives birth, at some happy period of time, to men of great and enterprising genius. It is our fortune to be witnesses of a new discovery in politicks; we may congratulate ourselves upon being cotemporaries with those men, who have showed that

hangmen and halters are unnecessary in a state, and that ministers may escape the reproach of destroying their enemies, by inciting them to destroy themselves.

This new method may, indeed, have upon different constitutions a different operation; it may destroy the lives of some, and the senses of others; but either of these effects will answer the purposes of the ministry, to whom it is indifferent, provided the nation becomes insensible, whether pestilence or lunacy prevails among them. Either mad or dead the greatest part of the people must quickly be, or there is no hope of the continuance of the present ministry.

For this purpose, my lords, what could have been invented more efficacious than an establishment of a certain number of shops, at which poison may be vended; poison so prepared as to please the palate, while it wastes the strength, and only kills by intoxi. cation? From the first instant that any of the enemies of the ministry shall grow clamorous and turbulent, a crafty hireling may lead him to the ministerial slaughterhouse, and ply him with their wonder-working liquor, till he is no longer able to speak or think; and, my lords, no man can be more agreeable to our ministers, than he that can neither speak nor think, except those who speak without thinking.

But, my lords, the ministers ought to reflect, that though all the people of the present age are their enemies, yet they have made no trial of the temper and inclinations of posterity. Our successours may be of opinions very different from ours; they may perhaps approve of wars on the continent, while our plantations are insulted and our trade obstructed; they may think the support of the house of Austria of more importance to us than our own defence; and may perhaps so far differ from their fathers, as to imagine the treasures of Britain very properly employed in supporting the troops, and increasing the splendour, of a foreign electorate.

Whatever, my lords, be the true reason for which this bill is so warmly promoted, I think they ought, at least, to be deliberately examined; and therefore

cannot think it consistent with our regard for the nation, to suffer it to be precipitated into a law. The year, my lords, is not so far advanced but that supplies may be raised by some other method, if this should be rejected. Nor do I think that we ought to consent to this, even though our refusal should hinder the supplies, since we have no right, for the sake of any advantage, however certain or great, to violate all the laws of heaven and earth, and to fill the exchequer with the price of the lives of our fellow subjects.

Let us, therefore, my lords, not suffer ourselves to be driven forward with such haste, as may hinder us from observing whither we are going. Let us not be persuaded to precipitate our counsels, by those who know that all delays are detrimental to their designs, because delays may produce new information; and they are conscious that the bill will be the less approved, the more it is understood.

But every reason which they can offer against the motion is, in my opinion, a reason for it; and therefore I shall readily agree to postpone the clause, and no less readily to reject the bill.

If, at last, reason and evidence are vain; if neither justice nor compassion can prevail; but the nation must be destroyed for the support of the government; let us at least, my lords, confine our assertions, in the preamble, to truth. Let us not affirm that drunkenness is established by the advice or consent of the lords spiritual; since I am confident not one of them will so far contradict his own doctrine, as to vote for a bill which gives a sanction to one vice, and ministers opportunities and temptations to all others, and which, if it be not speedily repealed, will overflow the whole nation with a deluge of wickedness.

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