458 Of Food. 



be the sauce used with food prepared of Indian corn, I 

 cannot too strongly recommend the use of that grain. 



While I was employed in making my experiment 

 upon hasty pudding, I learned from my servant (a Bava- 

 rian) who assisted me a fact which gave me great pleas- 

 ure, as it served to confirm me in the opinion I have 

 long entertained of the great merit of Indian corn. He 

 assured me that polenta is much esteemed by the peas- 

 antry in Bavaria, and that it makes a very considerable 

 article of their food; that it comes from Italy through 

 the Tyrol, and that it is commonly sold in Bavaria at 

 the same price as wheat-flour ! Can there be stronger 

 proofs of its merit ? 



The negroes in America prefer it to rice, and the 

 Bavarian peasants to wheat. Why, then, should not 

 the inhabitants of this island like it } It will not, I 

 hope, be pretended that it is in this favoured soil alone 

 that prejudices take such deep root that they are never 

 to be eradicated, or that there is any thing peculiar in 

 the construction of the palate of an Englishman. 



The objection that may be made to Indian corn — 

 that it does not thrive well in this country — is of no 

 weight. The same objection might, with equal reason, 

 be made to rice, and twenty other articles of food now 

 in common use. 



It has ever been considered, by those versed in the 

 science of political economy, as an object of the first 

 importance to keep down the prices of provisions, par- 

 ticularly in manufacturing and commercial countries ; 

 and, if there be a country on earth where this ought to 

 be done, it is surely Great Britain, and there is cer- 

 tainly no country which has the means of doing it so 

 much in its power. 



