FOOD AND DRINK. 107 



to be improved in every way, educated, fitted to take an equal 

 share with all Englishmen in the government of the common 

 wealth of England, to be blasphemers, tyrants, and insolent 

 rebels to humanity. (Many of them as good-souled men as 

 the world contains, nevertheless.) 



I have before said, and I repeat it with confidence, that I 

 believe this party to be the weaker one in England. I must 

 believe that the love of justice, freedom, and consistency, is 

 stronger with Englishmen than the bonds of custom, self-con 

 ceit, and blind idolatry of human arrangement, under however 

 sacred names it has come to them. 



But our British friends will ask : Would it be practicable to 

 give these poor toiling semi-brutes any the smallest exercise 

 of that governmental power, which, so far as they be not 

 wholly brutes, is their right 1 ? Yes, we American farmers 

 would judge, yes : there are offices to be performed for the 

 commonwealth of each parish or neighbourhood, of the re 

 quirements of which they are, or soon would make them 

 selves, fit judges. If there are not, then make such offices. 

 Who is a kind, firm, and closely scrutinizing master ; who is 

 a judicious and successful farmer ; who is an honest dealer with 

 them ; who is a skilful ploughman, a good thatcher, a good 

 hedge- trimmer, in the mile or two about them, they always 

 have formed a judgment. 



With regard to the habits of drinking and the customary 

 diet of those by whose labour England is mainly supplied 

 with food, I fear my statements may be incredible to Ameri 

 cans ; I therefore quote from authority that should be better 

 informed 



A correspondent of the Agricultural Gazette mentions, 

 that in Herefordshire and Worcestershire the allowance of 

 ^ider given to labourers, in addition to wages, is &quot; one to ten 

 gallons a-day.&quot; He observes that, of course, men cannot work 



