It is of great use, next to food itself, to our fisheries and to
our whole navigation. A great part of the distillery was carried on by
damaged corn, unfit for bread, and by barley and malt of the lowest
quality. These things could not be more unexceptionably employed. The
domestic consumption of spirits produced, without complaints, a very
great revenue, applicable, if we pleased, in bounties, to the bringing
corn from other places, far beyond the value of that consumed in making
it, or to the encouragement of its increased production at home.
As to what is said, in a physical and moral view, against the home
consumption of spirits, experience has long since taught me very little
to respect the declamations on that subject. Whether the thunder of the
laws or the thunder of eloquence "is hurled on _gin_" always I am
thunder-proof. The alembic, in my mind, has furnished to the world a far
greater benefit and blessing than if the _opus maximum_ had been really
found by chemistry, and, like Midas, we could turn everything into gold.
Undoubtedly there may be a dangerous abuse in the excess of spirits; and
at one time I am ready to believe the abuse was great. When spirits are
cheap, the business of drunkenness is achieved with little time or
labor; but that evil I consider to be wholly done away. Observation for
the last forty years, and very particularly for the last thirty, has
furnished me with ten instances of drunkenness from other causes for one
from this.
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