L] BREWING. 13 



first thing to be desired and to be sought after ; and, if 

 this little work should have the effect of aiding only 

 a small portion of the Labouring Classes in securing 

 that competence, it will afford great gratification to 

 their friend WM. COBBETT. 



Kensington, 19th July, 1821. 



BREWING BEER. 



20. BEFORE I proceed to give any directions about 

 brewing, let me mention some of the inducements to 

 do the thing. In former times, to set about to show 

 to- Englishmen that it was good for them to brew beer 

 in their houses would have been as impertinent as 

 gravely to insist, that they ought to endeavour not to 

 lose their breath ; for, in those times, (only forty years 

 ago,) to have a house and not to brew was a rare 

 thing indeed. Mr. ELLMAN, an pld^man and a large 

 fanner, in Sussex, has recently given in evidence, be- 

 fore a Committee of the House of Commons, this fact ; 

 that, forty years ago, there was not a labourer in his 

 parish that did not brew his -own beer ; and that now 

 there is not one that does it, except by chance the 

 malt be given him. The causes of this change have 

 been the lowering of the wages of labour, compared 

 with the price of provisions, by the means of the paper- 

 money ; the enormous tax upon the barley when made 

 into malt ; and the increased lax upon hops. These 

 have quite changed the customs of the English people 

 as to their drink. They still drink beer, but, in gene- 

 ral, it is of the brewing of common brewers, and in 

 public-houses, of which the common brewers have be- 

 come the owners, and have thus, by the aid of paper- 

 money, obtained a monopoly in the supplying of the 

 great body of the people with one of those things 

 which, to the hard-working man, is almost a necessary 

 of life. 



21. These things will be altered. They must be 

 altered. The nation must be sunk into nothingness, 



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