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retail price above the wholesale price so much as 

 to discourage the retail trade, and operate as a 

 check upon the poor associating at public houses 

 for the purpose of drunkenness. By such regula- 

 tions the poor man, in towns, may be induced to 

 purchase a small barrel at a time for consumption 

 at home,, and then his family would participate. 

 How much better than taking his earnings to the 

 beer houses, the resorts of depravity, and 

 spending them in selfish, brutish, and vicious in- 

 dulgence, leaving his family pining for the neces- 

 saries of life. Thus restricting the retail trade in 

 beer, the husbandry labourers and their families 

 might be supplied by buying it in wholesale 

 quantities, or by brewing their own malt as they 

 used to do 50 years ago, when they were much 

 more orderly and respectable. No doubt we far- 

 mers should get a better price for our barley if the 

 Malt Tax were repealed, and the same facilities 

 and temptations to drunkenness existed, but no 

 man who wishes for the good of his fellow crea- 

 tures can desire, for the sake of a little temporary 

 gain, that this should be the case ; indeed such a 

 man would take a very short-sighted view of his 

 own real interest ; even apart from graver consi- 

 derations, as a question of mere pounds, shillings, 

 and pence, he would ultimately be a loser ; for 

 such a state of things would immediately lead to 

 more universal habits of intemperance, wantonness, 

 and disorder ; and at length to general pauperism ; 

 so, that, though, with the one hand he might 



