7 s On Commerce. 



bread madofrqni flour*. But, even iti our years of greatest 

 plenty, is not rice a very useful article ? From the gene^ 

 ral reasonableness of the price, even the lower orders of the 

 people find it pleasant, wholesome, and to them a luxuri^ 

 ous treat: only a few years have passed away since all 

 classes of people were happy to find in it a substitute for 

 bread. I am apt to think that the Supreme Governor of 

 the world saw that it was necessary so to constitute the order 

 of nature, that years of scarcity might sometimes occur, to 

 teach ungrateful men the value of his blessings, as well as 

 to show them the necessity of a friendly intercourse with 

 other countries : and I am persuaded that, if that social inter- 

 course for which I contend were more generally adopted, 

 even famine would be divested of half its horrors. 



I have already said, that I would neither recommend wine 

 nor foreign brandy, as a common beverage to an English 

 labourer, in preference to good malt liquor; but however 

 preferable this may be while youthful vigour blooms in the 

 countenance, and manly strength braces every nerve : when 

 old age weakens the limbs, bows down the body, and dries 

 up every source of pleasure, Who will deny that a change is 

 often useful, and that even a little wine as well as some 

 other foreign cordial will make glad the heart of man, and 

 occasionally help to cheer the languor of declining years ? If 

 this be a true state of the matter, (and I think it will readily 

 be admitted by every person who has made observations on 

 these things.) was I not justified in saying, and now re- 

 peating, that it is a cruel policy to deprive the great bulk of 

 the people of any article which may be of such eminent use 4 

 and more particularly when nature requires it -most ? I my- 

 self have known several instances where the physician or 

 apothecary have recommended wine: the attending relatives, 

 of the patient answered (while the sympathetic tear startecj 

 from their eyes) ( A O sir, we have no money, it is too dear, 



* It would be superfluous to enter into the disquisition whether the natural 

 produce of every country being more proper for the inhabitants than any 

 foreign substitute, did not proceed more from long habit than from any po- 

 sitive law or order of nature: for it is a well known fact, that the stomach 

 and constitution of man very soon assimilate to a great variety of food. 



we 



