USES TO WHICH [Chap. 



the hrown-bread bill, on account of the scarcity 

 of wheat-flour, forgetting, that, in enabling the 

 millers, in offering them temptation irresistible 

 to sell bean-flour and the flour of cockle-seed 

 and all sorts of rubbish as human food, they 

 were actually robbing the ])igs, the sheep, the 

 poultry and the oxen and cows, which, with 

 stomachs adapted to the purpose, were sure to 

 make us, out of these materials, more human 

 food in their own way. Horne Tooke, who 

 was in Parliament the year after, called this the 

 *' poisoning bill,'' which was one of the things 

 for which he was excluded from the collective 

 wisdom. I made a vow from the very passing of 

 the Act, never to suffer a morsel of bread to be 

 eaten in my house till that Act had expired ; 

 and we were going on living upon old biscuit, 

 and upon flesh, butter, cheese, and milk, and 

 some pretty stiff ale. As if Providence meant 

 to reward me for my resolution, and to relieve 

 me at the same time, a good old friend in 

 Pennsylvania, reading in the newspapers that 

 famine prevailed in the land of his fathers, sent 

 me over two barrels of flour, which arrived just 

 about a month or six weeks, after the passing of 

 the Act. I was safe now, and had leisure to 

 hear the sad stories, and to lament the suf- 

 ferings of my neighbours : such gripings ; such 

 excruciating belly-aches 5 such cholera morbuses ; 



