For when did any man ever hear that a commodity was...

For when did any man ever hear that a commodity was prohibited by licensing its sale, or that to offer and refuse is the same action? Surely it never before was conceded by any man entrusted with the administration of public affairs, to raise taxes by the destruction of the people.

For there is no doubt but those on whom the inventors of this tax shall confer authority will be directed to assist their masters in their design to encourage the consumption of that liquor from which such large revenues are expected, and to multiply without end those licences which are to pay a yearly tribute to the crown. When I consider, my lords, the tendency of this bill, I find it calculated only for the propagation of disease, 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 that are not killed will be disabled and those who preserve their limbs will be deprived of their senses." This brilliant indictment of national policies by the saner elements of the British political life, reverberates across the centuries as a warning to the nations of the world.

The short-sighted politicians ignored the warning and in the short span of decades, the British Empire has crumbled down to dust more ignominiously than any historically known precedent of yore. Only two decades back it was a boast that the sun never set in the British Empire. Contrast this boast with the blatant fact that even in the British Isles there is a persistent fog over clouding the sun most of the year.

Of the three potent factors responsible for such catastrophic downfall - wine, women and wealth- the first one has certainly been productive of the greatest evil. Great statesmen like Lord Chesterfield, Edward Burke and Lord Acton failed to convince the British people that this world could not be held as a wine-shop of exploiters. "What is morally wrong cannot be politically right," was the motto with the Saner among the British leadership.

The nation as a whole, however, voted Bachus and Macchiavelli, with the inviolable consequence of such option-disgraceful downfall. Urdu verse: Fitrat afrad se igmaz bhi kar leti hai, Naheen karti hai pih ganmon ke gunahon ko mauf. (The Heavenly Order may connive at individual lapses, but there is no atonement for national transgressions). Revenues Revenues derived from the liquor traffic by a state are altogether illusory.