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TJie Country Gentleviaiis Magazine 



of the stock required to feed thirty millions 

 of people. Under the present circum- 

 stances, malt is too dear for keeping up 

 the flesh of the animals during the winter 

 season, because we have not only the duty 

 of 70 per cent, to add, but also the 

 advanced price through the non-production 

 of about ten and a-half millions of acres. 

 "What does this loss amount to ? Now, the 

 estimate of loss was made in 1868, and evi- 

 dence given by some of the best landholders 

 and farmers in the kingdom before the com- 

 mittee of both Houses that " if the malt 

 duty were abolished butchers' meat could be 

 produced at 2d. per lb. lower price for the 

 whole of Great Britain." Well, now, let us 

 take the official figures as to the consump- 

 tion of the United Kingdom. Say, in round 

 numbers, the consumption of stock is eighty 

 minions sterling per annum, and 2d. per lb. 

 is about 25 per cent, on this eighty millions, 

 that is a loss to the country of twenty millions, 

 which does not benefit any class or indivi- 

 dual in anyway. The farmer does not bene- 

 fit, because he can only breed, and rear, and 

 feed so limited a quantity that he is obliged 

 to ask £,\2 for what he would otherwise have 

 to sell in duplicate at ;^6, say in young stock. 

 The butcher does not benefit, because a bul- 

 lock that he could once buy at ;j^i2 is now 

 selling at ;^24, and so on. Now let us see 

 how the farmer and the working classes are 



affected in the consumption of their beer by 

 this same malt duly, in order to put a paltry 

 seven millions into the Treasury, in fact, how 

 all classes are robbed — by consent, perhaps, 

 as a rule. Taking the thirty odd millions of 

 population in the aggregate, there are sixteen 

 millions of adults, or persons over eighteen 

 years of age, and allow only one pint per day 

 to each adult — say half-a-pint to dinner and 

 half-a-pint to supper (this, I will surmise, Mr 

 Bremner himself would allow). This pint 

 per day at 2d., in place of a id., robs the 

 country of ;^27, 000,000 sterling per annum ; 

 and this is not much to the benefit of any indi- 

 vidual or class. It may make a few rich 

 Basses or Allsops, but that is all. My ex- 

 perience as a common brewer enables me to 

 assert that I agree with the author of the 

 " People's Blue-book," when he says, that " a 

 pint of good wholesome table-beer can be 

 produced (when the malt duty is off) at a 

 halfpenny, and leave 100 per cent, profit to 

 the brewer, this at the strength of four barrels 

 of beer to the quarter of malt." Well, if the 

 brewer could get 100 per cent, profit at a 

 halfpenny a pint, the retailer could sell it at a 

 penny and get the same profit, barring waste. 

 Now, if the people would only get up an 

 agitation for the total abolition of the malt 

 tax, which I have put before them as an illus- 

 tration of how the ;2^244,8oo,ooo per annum 

 goes, they would soon have meat cheap. 



THE PRICE OF MEAT AND RESTRICTIONS ON THE 

 CATTLE TRADE. 



MR JOHN P. BYRNE, Ballybohill 

 House, Co. Dublin, expresses his 

 views on this important subject as follows : — 

 During recent years, both in England and Ire- 

 land, the losses on cattle have been enormous, 

 the cause of those losses resting entirely upon 

 the fact that new forms of fatal disease have 

 been imported with foreign animals. These 

 losses, no doubt, tend to paralyze the efforts 

 of the producers to increase their supply, and 



deprive the consumers, not only of the ad- 

 vantages of an increasing supply, but of the 

 quantity these losses take from the actual 

 production, which Mr Baldwin estimates at 

 2,000,000 annually in Ireland, caused by con- 

 tagious and prevcntible diseases. Ought not 

 a question of such magnitude demand the 

 most serious attention of all classes ? The laws 

 have been made to promote and encourage 

 the importation of foreign animals to supply 



