times, meat on a Sunday: bread being the chief fupport of the family, which, however, had far from a fufficiency of that article, and would have ufe'd much more if they could have procure'd it.*

At Monmouth a labourer has about three pints of milk a day, which, with a little bread, ferves his children for break faft; his wife drinks tea: their dinner is bread, potatos, and falt; with, fometimes, a little fat or driping, if it can be procure'd cheap: their fupper, generally, bread or potatos.†

Bread and cheese, potatos and [milk-] porridge, and a thick flummery, made of coarse oat-meal, are the ufual diet of the labouring people in Pembrokeshire.

The breakfast of the labouring part of the community in the neighbourhood of Lancaster, ufually confifts of milk-pottage or haftey-pudding, which is there call'd water-pottage: and dinner, of potatos, with a little butter, and salt; fish, bacon, or butchers-meat, being, however, aded, according to the feafon, and circumftanceës of the family

The yeomanry and labouring poor throughout

* Ibi, p. 391. + Ili, 449. + Ibi, 898.

| Ibi, 309.

the greater part of Weftmoreland and Cumberland live alltogether without animal food. Even fubftantial statesmen, as they are there call'd, who cultivate their own land, do not fee a piece of flesh-meat at their table for weeks or months together. Their chief diet is potatos, milk, and oat-cakes; wheaten-bread being allmost as great a rarity as beef or mutton. Of this the compileër was partly an eye-witnefs, and partly obtain'd information on the spot.

The provisions ufe'd in the township of KirkbyLonsdale by the labouring poor, are, chiefly, milk, oat-bread, haftey-pudding, onions, potatos, and, now and then, a little butchersmeat.*

Sir F. M. Eden has giveën the income of a weaveër in Kendal,with a wife and feven children: their provision is chiefly oat-meal, potatos, milk, and butter no animal food whatever.f

He has, likewise, stateëd the earnings and expenditure of a poor woman in Cumberland, who "feems perfectly hapy, content, and cheerful," with the confiderable income of 4l. 1f. 7±d. Her yearly charge for butchers-meat is if. 6d.

"

* State of the poor, p. 771.

↑ Ibi, 769.

for wheaten-bread 1f. Her diet is haftey-pud ding, milk, butter, and potatos.*

The labouring classes of the people, he fays, in many parts of the kingdom, live entirely on brown bread.†

Many poor people, particularly in Scotland, live, and that very comfortablely, for months together, upon oat-meal, and barley-meal, mix'd with onely water and falt, with no other variety than the different degrees of thickness and thinnefs of bread, pottage, flummery, and gruel. If they can afford, now and then, to convert a peck of malt into beer [ale], they think themselves moft curiously provideëd.‡

Befide the inftanceës allready adduce'd to disprove the necessity of animal food, from the example of nations and numbers, may be aded. fome from that of individuals, lately or ftil liveing.

A writeër who appear'd in The gentlemans magazine, for August 1787, under the signature of Etonenfis, in giveing a description of Moffat, fays that the chalybeat fpring, perhap the ftrongest in Britain, was discover'd about 40 years ago;" to which he ads the following

note :

* Ibi, II, 75. + Ibi, 78.

+ Ibi, I, 503.

"This spring was found out in 1748, by one of the most original geniuses that ever existed. His name was John Williamfon, alias Pythagoras, alias Bramin, alias Hole-John. This laft nick-name proceeded, i believe, from a farm he rented the two others from his fingular notions. He was wel skil'd in natural philofophy, and might be say'd to have been a moral philosopher, not in theory onely, but in ftrict and uniform practice. He was remarkablely humane and charitable, and, though poor, was a bold and avow'd enemy to every fpecies of oppresfion. .. Among others, the transmigration of fouls, or metempsychofis of Pythagoras, was fay'd to have been one of his favourite dogmas.* Certain it is, that he accounted the murder (as he [justly] call'd it) of the meaneft animal, except in felf-defence, a very criminal breach of the law of nature, infifting, that the creator of all things had constituteëd man, not the tyrant, but the law◄

* It was probablely so say'd by ignorant people, who cannot distinguish justice or humanity from an abfurd and imposfible fystem. The compileër of the present book, like Pythagoras and John Williamfon, abstains from animal food; but he does not, nevertheless, believe in the metempsychofis, and much doubts whether it was the belief of either of thofe philofophers.

ful and limited fovereign, of the inferior animals, which, he contended, anfwer'd the ends of their creation better than their little defpotîck lord.......... He did not think it

-enough,

In this late age, advent'rous to have touch'd
Light on the precepts of the Samian fage;

for he acted in rigid conformity to them. Dure-
ing the last 40 or 50 years of his life he totally
abstain'd from animal food, and was much of-
fended when any was offer'd to him. He in-
fifted that, at best, it serve'd but to cloud the un-
derstanding, to blunt the feelings, and to inflame
every bad pasfion; and that thofe nations who
eat little or no flesh, as the poor among the
Scotch and Irish, were not inferior in fize,
ftrength, or courage to other men.
His vege-
table and milk diet afforded him in particular
very fufficient nourishment; for, when i laft faw
him, he was ftil a tall, robuft, and rather corpu-
lent inan, though upward of fourfcore. Though
he allow'd, and even revere'd, the general autho-
rity of the scriptures, yet he contended that the
text had been vitiateëd in thofe pasfagees which

He feems to have takeën this idea from Genefis I, 28.