USES TO WHICH [Chap. 



can be spared from the house; and, if the mill 

 be near at hand, and circumstances render it 

 convenient, corn-meal is mixed with the milk, 

 into a sort of porridge, which is given to these 

 young pigs during a month or two after their 

 weaning ; and, oh God ! how superior is this 

 diet, not to that of the miserable human beings 

 in Ireland, but to that, ashamed I am to say it, 

 of the far greater part, nay of nine- tenths, or 

 nineteen- twentieths, of those, in England, from 

 whose labour come all that we eat, drink, wear ; 

 all that covers us, both by day and night, and all 

 that conveys us from one place to another ! Never 

 was such a thing heard of in x\merica, as a 

 human being sitting down to make a meal of 

 potatoes. The very beggars (for there are some 

 that go expressly from Europe, to beg, and travel 

 with commissions for the purpose), even these 

 beggars would, were you to tender them a mess 

 of potatoes, as a meal, fling it in your face. The 

 English farmer, who knows well all about the 

 grindings, the mixings, the sloppings of barley- 

 meal ; who knows well all the inventions of 

 troughs and hutches, and the rest of the devices 

 for preventing a waste of the barley-meal; and who 

 knows also, that, though hogs will eat dry 

 and whole barley, they will not fatten upon it ; 

 he knows that to give it as weaning-food to a 

 pig would be a sort of madness ; he knows, that 



