ANIMALS. 7 



called a broken heart. Some of these I have 

 known myself, when very little able to relieve 

 them ; and I have been told, by a very active 

 and worthy magistrate, that the number of such 

 as die in London for want, is much greater than 

 one would imagine I think he talked of two 

 thousand in a year. 



But how numerous soever those who die of 

 hunger may be, many times greater, on the other 

 hand, are the number of those who die by reple- 

 tion. It is not the province of the present page 

 to speculate, with the physician, upon the dan- 

 ger of surfeits ; or with the moralist, upon the 

 nauseousness of gluttony ; it will only be proper 

 to observe, that as nothing is so prejudicial to 

 health as hunger by constraint, so nothing is 

 more beneficial to the constitution than voluntary 

 abstinence. It was not without reason that reli- 

 gion enjoined this duty; since it answered the 

 double purpose of restoring the health oppressed 

 by luxury, and diminished the consumption of 

 provisions ; so that a part might come to the 

 poor. It should be the business of the legisla- 

 ture, therefore, to enforce this divine precept ; 

 and thus, by restraining one part of mankind in 

 the use of their superfluities, to consult for the 

 benefit of those who want the necessaries of life. 

 The injunctions for abstinence are strict over the 

 whole Continent, and were rigorously observed, 

 even among ourselves, for a long time after the 

 Reformation. Queen Elizabeth, by giving her 

 commands upon this head the air of a political 

 injunction, lessened in a great measure, and in 



