96 KEEPING PIGS. [NO. 



bacon, indeed ; but it has a great deal to do, my good 

 fellow with your affairs, as I shall, probably, hereafter 

 more fully show, though I shall now leave you to 

 the enjoyment of your flitches of bacon, which, as I 

 before observed, will do ten thousand times more than 

 any Methodist parson, or any other parson (except, of 

 course, those of our church) to make you happy, not 

 only in this world, but in the world to come. Meat 

 in the house is a great source of harmony, a great 

 preventer of the temptation to commit those things, 

 which, from small beginnings, lead, finally, to the 

 most fatal and atrocious results ; and I hold that 

 doctrine to be truly damnable, which teaches that 

 God has made any selection, any condition relative to 

 belief, which is to save from punishment those who 

 violate the principles of natural justice. 



154. Some other meat you may have ; but, bacon 

 is the great thing. It is always ready ; as good cold 

 as hot ; goes to the field or the coppice conveniently; 

 in harvest, and other busy times, demands the pot to 

 be boiled only on a Sunday ; has twice as much 

 strength in it as any other thing of the same weight; 

 and in short, has in it every quality that tends to 

 make a labourer's family able to work and well off. 

 One pound of bacon, such as that which I have de- 

 scribed, is, in a labourer's family, worth four or five 

 of ordinary mutton or beef, which are great part bone, 

 and which, in short, are gone in a moment. But 

 always observe, it is fat bacon that I am talking 

 about. There will, in spite of all that can be done, 

 be some lean in the gammons, though comparatively 

 very little ; and therefore you ought to begin at that 

 end of the flitches ; for, old lean bacon is not good. 



155. Now, as to the cost. A pig (a spayed sow is 

 best) bought in March four months old, can be had 

 now for fifteen shillings. The cost till fatting time 

 is next to nothing to a Cottager ; and then the cost, 

 at the present price of corn, would, for a hog of 

 twelve score, not exceed three pounds ; in the whole 



four pounds Jive ; a pot of poison a week bought 

 at the public-house comes to twenty-six shillings 



