58 ON SWINE. 



mon-piace knowledge in a pompous manner, frequently 

 taking the downward step from the sublime. He is 

 addicted to quoting bad Latin, Avhich he sometimes con- 

 descendingly renders into worse English. He also 

 makes loud boasts of his Academic degree, if he has 

 one, and whether he has one or not all sensible people 

 willingly write him down an A. SS. 



If the Committee have gone the whole hog in behalf 

 of the i-ace of animals committed to their charge, it is 

 because they have reason to believe that the public 

 have very inadequate notions of their importance to the 

 welfare of our own species. Perhaps the best way to 

 appreciate the blessings we possess, is, to suppose our- 

 selves to be at once deprived of them. Let us apply 

 this test to our connection with the swinish race. Let 

 us suppose that some Miller prophet, of their number, 

 should arise and predict a sudden and total destruction 

 of his kind, and that unlike that of his human proto- 

 type, his prediction should be fulfilled. We will sup- 

 pose the day of doom to have arrived, and that every 

 swine, male and female, is swept from the face of the 

 earth! 



What darkness would then come over the world ! We 

 should be, like the foolish virgins, without oil in cur 

 lamps ; Jews and Mahomedans would rejoice over the 

 destruction of what they regard as the unclean race, 

 and Grahamites would exult at their downfall. There 

 wouhl at once be a famine of pork, in all its solid and 

 liquid foi'ms. Never more could we expect to live on 

 the fat of the land. Our dinners would lose their rel- 

 ish, and fish, which epicures say should swim three 

 times, once in the water, once in the fat, and once in 

 the stomach, would have to remain in their native ele- 

 ment. The population of the earth would be percep- 

 tibly thinned; — we do not assert that the number would 

 be less, but the people themselves would be thinner. 

 Lantern jaws and cadaverous countenances would be 

 contemptibly common. Aldermen would lose their 

 rotundity and there would be no scarcity of living skel- 

 etons. There would be a short supply of short cakes, 



