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In 1688, gin had became really popular drink in England. Some people were against the excessive selling of gin, but others liked gin. So the English government decided to open the distilling trade to all English people who paid taxes and over the next sixty years the government regulated the sale of gin with irregular taxation policy. Finally they come up with the Gin Act of 1751, which seemed to work for the people who didn't like the production of gin.
For many people, gin just made life worse in London and they thought that beer was better. These people thought the gin leaves a lot of people intoxicated on the streets and, as shown in the picture in document eleven, people dead and people becoming animals. Of course this is an exaggeration, but they believed that gin will ruin people's lives. Instead of ruining live, beer seemed to make the world calmer. People get along and have some beer for fun.
In the picture in document twelve, it shows people working together and being nice to each other. William Hogarth (the guy who drew the pictures) obviously did not like gin and believed it should not be sold. When people are intoxicated, they can't work, they can't help anyone, they can't do anything. They just lay on the floor or fight with someone.
This does not help anyone, like document three said that once you step into a gin shop it is full or poor ragged people, cursing and quarreling each other. If you are drunk you cannot make right decisions all the time and some of these people who are drunk are His Majesty's subjects, who help him make decisions about the government. The petition to Parliament shown in documents seven shows that there is to many people who can ruin the government if they drink. Lord Lonsdale believes drinking poisons the body, which fills the street with madness. This would not help the king at all if he was trying to keep people from committing crime.
Drinking gin to a lot of people is wrong, but others have another way at looking at it. If it wasn't for the production of gin then the economy in England would have gone down the drain. This is because gin is made from grain and if they didn't make gin there would have been too much grain and no one to buy it, as Daniel Defoe's review in document two. People like gin, it wasn't a crime to like the drink, even though some people treat it that way. Lord Bathurst said "the cold damp and often foggy climate of England makes such an aid to nature absolutely necessary. " So Lord Bathurst believed that gin was completely natural to like and it helped people calm down after a long day of work. People started taking interest on how good the drink taste and they were willing to pay the amount for it because they had the money.
In the 1700 's the production level of gin shot up. This is shown on the graph in document one and if the government put a tax of gin so high people are not going to be able to pay for the gin and the king would lose a lot of money. As shown in document six, His Majesty gets 70, 000 a year on gin tax, but if he raises the tax to the point where poor people can't pay for gin then he would lose 70, 000. So the king would be poorer if he raises the tax on gin and he won't make the people who like to drink, happy. As one can see, there are many different ways to think of gin and other distilled liquors. Some people like it and some people did not.
In the end, Parliament believed they needed to stop the amount of drinking in London because of the people's health, which lead to the making of the Gin Act of 1751. This, as seen in the historical background, "prohibited gin distillers from selling to unlicensed merchants, restricted retail licenses to substantial property holders, and charged high fee to those merchants eligible for retail licenses. "
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Research essay sample on Gin Act Of 1751 Act Of 1751 People
