 CAUSES, PIGS, BEES, USE, GOATS, PULTRY AND RABBITS, and relative to other matters deemed useful in the conducting of the affairs of a labourer's family, to which are added instructions relative to the selecting, the cutting, and the bleaching of the plants of English grass and grain for the purpose of making hats and bonnets, and also instructions for erecting and using ice-houses after the Virginian manor. By William Cobbett 1. Paragraphs 1–19, Introduction To the labouring classes of this kingdom. Throughout this little work I shall number the paragraphs in order to be able, at some stages of the work, to refer with them or facility to parts that have gone before. The last number will contain an index, by the means of which the several matters may be turned to without loss of time, for when economy is the subject, time is a thing which ought by no means to be overlooked. The word economy, like a great many others, has, in its application, been very much abused. It is generally used as if it meant parsimony, stinginess, or niggadliness, and at best merely the refraining from expending money. Hence, misers and close-fisted men disguise their propensity and conduct under the name of economy, whereas the most liberal disposition, a disposition precisely the contrary of that of the miser, is perfectly consistent with economy. Economy means management, and nothing more, and it is generally applied to the affairs of a house and family, which affairs are an object of the greatest importance, whether as relating to individuals, or to a nation. A nation is made powerful and to be honoured in the world, not so much by the number of its people, as by the ability and character of that people, and the ability and character of a people depend in a great measure upon the economy of the several families which all taken together make up the nation. There never yet was, and never will be, a nation permanently great, consisting for the greater part of wretched and miserable families. In every view of the matter, therefore, it is desirable that the families of which a nation consists should be happily off, and as this depends in a great degree upon the management of their concerns, the present work is intended to convey to the families of the labouring classes in particular such information as I think may be useful with regard to that management. I lay it down as a maxim, that for a family to be happy they must be well supplied with food and raiment. It is a sorry effort that people make to persuade others, or to persuade themselves, that they can be happy in a state of want of the necessaries of life. The doctrines which fanaticism preaches, and which teach men to be content with poverty, have a very pernicious tendency, and are calculated to favour tyrants by giving them passive slaves. To live well, to enjoy all things that make life pleasant, is the right of every man who constantly uses his strength judiciously and lawfully. It is to blaspheme God to suppose that he created man to be miserable, to hunger, to thirst and perish with cold, in the midst of that abundance which is the fruit of their own labour. Instead therefore of applauding happy poverty, which applause is so much the fashion of the present day, I despise the man that is poor and contented. For such content is certain proof of a base disposition, a disposition which is the enemy of all industry, all exertion, all love of independence. Let it be understood, however, that by poverty I mean real want, a real insufficiency of the food and raiment and lodging necessary to health and decency, and not that imaginary poverty of which some persons complain. The man who, by his own and his family's labour, can provide a sufficiency of food and raiment, and a comfortable dwelling-place, is not a poor man. There must be different ranks and degrees in every civil society, and indeed so it is even amongst the savage tribes. There must be different degrees of wealth, some must have more than others, and the richest must be a great deal richer than the least rich, but it is necessary to the very existence of a people, that nine out of ten should live wholly by the sweat of their brow, and is it not degrading to human nature, that all the nine-tenths should be called poor, and what is still worse, call themselves poor, and be contented in that degraded state. The laws, the economy, or management of a state, may be such as to render it impossible for the labourer, however skillful and industrious, to maintain his family in health and decency, and such has for many years past been the management of the affairs of this once truly great and happy land. A system of paper money, the effect of which was to take from the labourer the half of his earnings, was what no industry and care could make head against. I do not pretend that this system was adopted by design, but no matter for the cause, such was the effect. Better times, however, are approaching. The labourer now appears likely to obtain that hire of which he is worthy, and therefore this appears to me to be the time to press upon him the duty of using his best exertions for the rearing of his family in a manner that must give him the best security for happiness to himself, his wife and children, and to make him in all respects what his forefathers were. The people of England have been famed in all ages for their good living, for the abundance of their food and goodness of their attire. The old sayings about English roast-beef and plum pudding, and about English hospitality, had not their foundations in nothing. And in spite of all refinements of sickly minds, it is abundant living amongst the people at large which is the great test of good government, and the surest basis of national greatness and security. If the labourer have his fair wages, if there be no false weights and measures, whether of money or of goods, by which he is defrauded, if the laws be equal in their effect upon all men, if he be called upon for no more than his due share of the expenses necessary to support the government and defend the country, he has no reason to complain. If the largeness of his family demand extraordinary labour and care, these are due from him to it. He is the cause of the existence of that family, and therefore he is not, except in cases of accidental calamity, to throw upon others the burden of supporting it. Besides, little children are as arrows in the hands of the giant, and blessed is the man that hath his quiver full of them. That is to say, children, if they bring their cares, bring also their pleasures and solid advantages. They become very soon so many assistants and props to the parents, who, when old age comes on, are amply repaid for all the toils and all the cares that children have occasioned in their infancy. To be without sure and safe friends in the world makes life not worth having. And whom can we be so sure of, as of our children? Brothers and sisters are a mutual support. We see them in almost every case grow up into prosperity, when they act the part that the impulses of nature prescribe. When cordially united, a father and sons, or a family of brothers and sisters, may in almost any state of life set what is called misfortune at defiance. These considerations are much more than enough to sweeten the toils and cares of parents, and to make them regard every additional child as an additional blessing. But that children may be a blessing and not a curse, care must be taken of their education. This word has of late years been so perverted, so corrupted, so abused in its application, that I am almost afraid to use it here. Yet I must not suffer it to be usurped by Kant and tyranny. I must use it, but not without clearly saying what I mean. Education means breeding up, bringing up or rearing up, and nothing more. This includes everything with regard to the mind as well as the body of the child, but of late years it has been so used as to have no sense applied to it but that of book learning, with which, nine times out of ten, it has nothing at all to do. It is indeed proper, and it is the duty of all parents, to teach or cause to be taught their children as much as they can of books, after, and not before, all the measures are safely taken for enabling them to get their living by labour, or for providing them a living without labour, and that too out of the means obtained and secured by the parents, out of their own income. The taste of the times is unhappily, to give children something of book learning, with a view of placing them to live in some way or other upon the labour of other people. Very seldom, comparatively speaking, has this succeeded, even during the wasteful public expenditure of the last thirty years, and in the times that are approaching, it cannot I thank God, succeed at all. When the project has failed, what disappointment, mortification, and misery to both parent and child? The latter is spoiled as a labourer, his book learning has only made him conceited, into some course of desperation he falls, and the end is but too often not only wretched, but ignominious. Understand me clearly here, however, for it is the duty of parents to give, if they be able, book learning to their children, having first taken care to make them capable of earning their living by bodily labour. When that object has once been secured, the other may, if the ability remain, be attended to. But I am wholly against children wasting their time in the idleness of what is called education, and particularly in schools over which the parents have no control, and when nothing is taught but the rudiments of civility, pauperism, and slavery. The education that I have in view is therefore of a very different kind. You should bear constantly in mind that nine-tenths of us are from the very nature and necessities of the world born to gain our livelihood by the sweat of our brow. What reason have we then to presume that our children are not to do the same? If they be, as now and then one will be, endued with extraordinary powers of mind, those powers may have an opportunity of developing themselves, and if they never have that opportunity, the harm is not very great to us or to them. Nor does it hence follow that the descendants of labourers are always to be labourers. The path upwards is steep and long, to be sure. Treasury, care, skill, excellence in the present parent lay the foundation of a rise under more favourable circumstances for his children. The children of these take another rise, and by and by the descendants of the present labourer become gentlemen. This is the natural progress. It is by attempting to reach the top at a single leap that so much misery is produced in the world, and the propensity to make such attempts has been cherished and encouraged by the strange projects that we have witnessed of late years for making the labourers virtuous and happy by giving them what is called education. The education which I speak of consists in bringing children up to labour with steadiness, with care, and with skill, to show them how to do as many useful things as possible, to teach them to do them all in the best manner, to set them an example in industry, sobriety, cleanliness and neatness, to make all these habitual to them, so that they never shall be liable to fall into the contrary, to let them always see a good living proceeding from labour, and thus to remove from them the temptation to get at the goods of others by violent or fraudulent means, and to keep far from their minds all the inducements to hypocrisy and deceit. And bear in mind that if the state of the labourer has its disadvantages when compared with other callings and conditions of life, it has also its advantages. It is free from the torments of ambition, and from a great part of the causes of ill-health, for which not all the riches in the world and all the circumstances of high rank are a compensation. The able and prudent labourer is always safe, at the least, and that is what few men are who are lifted above him. They have losses and crosses to fear, the very thought of which never enters his mind if he act well his part towards himself, his family, and his neighbours. But the basis of good to him is steady and skillful labour. To assist him in the pursuit of this labour, and in the turning of it to the best account, are the principal objects of the present little work. I proposed a treat of brewing beer, making bread, keeping cows and pigs, rearing poultry, and of other matters. And to show that while from a very small piece of ground a large part of the food of a considerable family may be raised, the very act of raising it will be the best possible foundation of education of the children of the labourer. That it will teach them a great number of useful things, add greatly to their value when they go forth from their father's home, make them start in life with all possible advantages, and give them the best chance of leading happy lives. And is it not much more rational for parents to be employed in teaching their children how to cultivate a garden, to feed and rear animals, to make bread, beer, bacon, butter, and cheese, and to be able to do these things for themselves or for others, than to leave them to prowl about the lanes and commons, or to mope at the heels of some crafty, sleek-headed pretended saint, who while he extracts the last penny from their pockets, bids them be contented with their misery, and promises them, in exchange for their pence, everlasting glory in the world to come. It is upon the hungry and the wretched that the fanatic works. The dejected and forlorn are his prey. As an ailing carcass in genders vermin, a pauperised community in genders teachers of fanaticism, the very foundation of whose doctrines is that we are to care nothing about this world, and that all our labours and exertions are in vain. The man who is doing well, who is in good health, who has a blooming and dutiful and cheerful and happy family about him, and who passes his day of rest amongst them, is not to be made to believe that he was born to be miserable, and that poverty, the natural and just reward of laziness, is to secure him a crown of glory. Not be it from me to recommend a disregard of even outward observances as to matters of religion, but can it be religion to believe that God hath made us to be wretched and dejected? Can it be religion to regard as marks of his grace, the poverty and misery that almost invariably attend our neglect to use the means of obtaining a competence in worldly things? Can it be religion to regard as blessings, those things, those very things which God expressly numbers amongst his curses? Poverty never finds a place amongst the blessings promised by God. His blessings are of a directly opposite description, flocks, herds, corn, wine and oil, a smiling land, a rejoicing people, abundance for the body and gladness of heart, these are the blessings which God promises to the industrious, the sober, the careful and the upright. Let no man then believe that to be poor and wretched is a mark of God's favour, and let no man remain in that state if he by any honest means can rescue himself from it. Poverty leads to all sorts of evil consequences. Want, horrid want, is the great parent of crime. To have a dutiful family, the father's principle of rule must be love, not fear. This sway must be gentle, or he will have only an unwilling and short lived obedience. But it is given to but few men to be gentle and good-humoured amidst the various torments attendant on pinching poverty. A competence is, therefore, the first thing to be thought of. It is the foundation of all good in the labourer's dwelling. Without it little but misery can be expected. Health, peace and competence, one of the wisest of men, regards as the only things needful to man, but the two former are scarcely to be had without the latter. Competence is the foundation of happiness and of exertion. Beset with wants, having a mind continually harassed with fears of starvation, who can act with energy, who can calmly think? To provide a good living, therefore, for himself and family, is the very first duty of every man. Two things, says Agha, have I asked, deny me them not before I die. Remove far from me vanity and lies, give me neither poverty nor riches, feed me with food convenient for me, lest I be full and deny thee, or lest I be poor and steal. A good living, therefore, a competence, is the first thing to be desired and to be sought after. And if this little work should have the effect of aiding only a small portion of the labouring classes in securing that competence, it will afford great gratification to their friend William Coppett, Kensington, 19th of July, 1821, paragraphs 20 to 37, Brewing Beer. Before I proceed to give any directions about brewing, let me mention some of the inducements to do the thing. In former times, to set about to show to Englishmen that it was good for them to brew beer in their houses, would have been as impertinent as gravely to insist that they ought to endeavour not to lose their breath, for in those times, only forty years ago, to have a house and not to brew was a rare thing indeed. Mr. Elman, an old man and a large farmer in Sussex, has recently given in evidence before a committee of the House of Commons this fact, that forty years ago there was not a labourer in his parish that did not brew his own beer, and that now there is not one that does it, except by chance the malt be given him. The causes of this change have been the lowering of the wages of labour compared with the price of provisions, by the means of the paper money, the enormous tax upon the barley when made into malt, and the increased tax upon hops. These have quite changed the customs of the English people as to their drink. They still drink beer, but in general it is of the brewing of common brewers, and in public houses, of which the common brewers have become the owners, and have thus, by the aid of paper money, obtained a monopoly in the supplying of the great body of the people, with one of those things which to the hardworking man is almost a necessary of life. These things will be altered, they must be altered. The nation must be sunk into nothingness, or a new system must be adopted, and the nation will not sink into nothingness. The malt now pays a tax of four shillings and sixpence a bushel, and the barley costs only three shillings. This brings the bushel of malt to eight shillings including the maltster's charge for malting. If the tax were taken off the malt, malt would be sold at the present price of barley for about three shillings and thruppence a bushel, because a bushel of barley makes more than a bushel of malt, and the tax, besides its amount, causes great expenses of various sorts to the maltster. The hops pay a tax of tuppence a pound, and a bushel of malt requires in general a pound of hops. If these two taxes were taken off, therefore, the consumption of barley and of hops would be exceedingly increased, for double the present quantity would be demanded, and the land is always ready to send it forth. It appears impossible that the landlord should much longer submit to these intolerable burdens on their estates. In short, they must get off the malt tax, or lose those estates. They must do a great deal more, indeed, but that they must do at any rate. The paper money is fast losing its destructive power, and things are with regard to the labourers coming back to what they were forty years ago, and therefore we may prepare for the making of beer in our own houses, and take leave of the poisonous stuff served out to us by common brewers. We may begin immediately, for even at present prices, home-brewed beer is the cheapest drink that a family can use, except milk, and milk can be applicable only in certain cases. The drink which has come to supply the place of beer, has in general been tea. It is notorious that tea has no useful strength in it, that it contains nothing nutritious, that it, besides being good for nothing, has badness in it, because it is well known to produce want of sleep in many cases, and in all cases to shake and weaken the nerves. It is in fact a weaker kind of lordenum, which enlivens for the moment, and deadens afterwards. At any rate, it communicates no strength to the body, it does not in any degree assist in affording what labour demands. It is then of no use. And now, as to its cost, compared with that of beer, I shall make my comparison applicable to a year, or three hundred and sixty-five days. I shall suppose the tea to be only five shillings a pound, the sugar only seven pence, the milk only tuppants a quart, the prices are at the very lowest. I shall suppose a teapot to cost a shilling, six cups and saucers, two shillings and six pence, and six pewter spoons, eighteen pence. How to estimate the firing, I hardly know, but certainly there must be in the course of the year two hundred fires made that would not be made were it not for tea drinking. Then comes the great article of all, the time employed in this tea-making affair. It is impossible to make a fire, boil water, make the tea, drink it, wash up the things, sweep up the fireplace and put all to rights again in a less space of time upon an average than two hours. However, let us allow one hour, and here we have a woman occupied no less than three hundred and sixty-five hours in the year, or thirty whole days at twelve hours in the day, that is to say one month out of the twelve in the year, besides the waste of the man's time in hanging about waiting for the tea. Needs there anything more to make a cease to wonder at seeing labourer's children with dirty linen and holes in the heels of their stockings. Observe too, that the time thus spent is one half of it, the best time of the day, it is the top of the morning, which in every calling of life contains an hour worth two or three hours of the afternoon. By the time that the clattering tea-tackle is out of the way the morning is spoiled, its prime is gone, and any work that is to be done afterwards lags heavily along. If the mother have to go out to work the tea affair must all first be over. She comes into the field, in summer time, when the son has gone a third part of his course. She has the heat of the day to encounter, instead of having her work done and being ready to return home at any early hour. Yet early she must go, too, for there is the fire again to be made, the clattering tea-tackle again to come forward, and even in the longest day she must have candle-light, which never ought to be seen in a cottage except in case of illness from March to September. Now then, let us take the bare cost of the use of tea. I suppose a pound of tea to last twenty days, which is not nearly half an ounce every morning and evening. I allow for each mess half a pint of milk, and I allow three pounds of the red dirty sugar to each pound of tea. The account of expenditure would then stand very high, but to these must be added the amount of the tea-tackle, one set of which will upon an average be demolished every year. To these outgoings must be added the cost of beer at the public-house, for some the man will have, after all, and the woman too, unless they be upon the point of actual starvation. Two pots a week is as little as will serve in this way, and here is a dead loss of nine-punts a week, seeing that two pots of beer full as strong and a great deal better can be brewed at home for thruppings. The account of the year's tea-drinking will then stand thus. Eighteen pounds of tea, four pounds ten shillings. Fifty-four pounds of sugar, one pound eleven and six. Three hundred and sixty-five pints of milk, one pound ten. Tea-tackle, five shillings. Two hundred fires, sixteen shillings and eight pints. Thirty days' work, fifteen shillings. Loss by going to public-house, one pound nineteen. Total eleven pounds, seven shillings, and tuppence. I have here estimated everything at its very lowest. The entertainment which I have here provided is as poor, as mean, as miserable as anything short of starvation can set forth, and yet the wretched thing amounts to a good third part of a good and able labourer's wages. For this money he and his family may drink good and wholesome beer. In a short time out of the mere savings from this waste may drink it out of silver cups and tankards. In a labourer's family wholesome beer that has a little life in it is all that is wanted in general. Little children that do not work should not have beer. Broth, porridge, or something in that way is the thing for them. However, I shall suppose, in order to make my comparison as little complicated as possible, that he brews nothing but beer as strong as the generality of beer to be had at the public-house, and divested of the poisonous drugs which that beer but too often contains, and I shall further suppose that he uses in his family two-quarts of this beer every day from the first of October to the last day of March, inclusive, three-quarts a day during the months of April and May, four-quarts a day during the months of June and September, and five-quarts a day during the months of July and August, and if this be not enough it must be a family of drunkards. Here are 1,079 quarts, or 274 gallons. Now a bushel of malt will make eighteen gallons of better beer than that which is sold in the public-houses, and this is precisely a gallon for the price of a quart. People should bear in mind that the beer bought at the public-house is loaded with the beer tax, with the tax on the public-housekeeper, in the shape of the license, with all the taxes and expenses of the brewer, with all the taxes, rent, and other expenses of the publican, and with all the profits of both brewer and publican, so that when a man swallows a pot of beer at a public-house, he has all these expenses to help to defray besides the mere tax on the malt and on the hops. Well then, to brew this ample supply of good beer for a labourer's family, these 274 gallons, requires fifteen bushels of malt, and, for let us do the thing well, fifteen pounds of hops. The malt is now eight shillings a bushel, and very good hops may be bought for less than a shilling a pound. The grains and yeast will amply pay for the labour and fuel employed in the brewing, seeing that there will be pigs to eat the grains, and bread to be baked with the yeast. The account will then stand thus. Fifteen bushels of malt, six pounds. Fifteen pounds of hops, fifteen shillings. Where have you tensils, ten shillings? Still seven pounds, five shillings. Here then, is the sum of four pounds, two shillings and tuppence, saved every year. The utensils for brewing are a brass kettle, a mashing tub, coolers, for which washing tubs may serve, a half hog-seed, with one end taken out, for a tonne-tub, about four nine-gallon casks, and a couple of eighteen-gallon casks. This is an ample supply of utensils, each of which will last with proper care a good long lifetime or two, and the whole of which, even if purchased new from the shop, will only exceed by a few shillings if they exceed at all, the amount of the saving arising the very first year from quitting the troublesome and pernicious practice of drinking tea. The saving of each succeeding year would, if you chose it, purchase a silver mug to hold half a pint at least. However, the saving would naturally be applied to purposes more conducive to the well-being and happiness of a family. It is not, however, the mere saving to which I look. This is indeed a matter of great importance, whether we look at the amount itself or at the ultimate consequences of a judicious application of it, for four pounds make a great hole in a man's wages for the year, and when we consider all the advantages that would arise to a family of children from having these four pounds, now so miserably wasted, laid out upon their backs, in the shape of a decent dress. It is impossible to look at this waste without feelings of sorrow, not wholly unmixed with those of a harsher description. But I look upon the thing in a still more serious light. I view the tea-drinking as a destroyer of health, an enfeebler of the frame, an engenderer of effeminacy and laziness, a debaucher of youth, and a maker of misery for old age. In the fifteen bushels of malt there are five hundred and seventy pounds weight of sweet, that is to say, of nutritious matter, unmixed with anything injurious to health. In the seven hundred and thirty tea-messes of the year there are fifty-four pounds of sweet in the sugar, and about thirty pounds of matter equal to sugar in the milk. Here are eighty-four pounds instead of five hundred and seventy, and even the good effect of these eighty-four pounds is more than overbalanced by the corrosive, gnawing, and poisonous powers of the tea. It is impossible for anyone to deny the truth of this statement. Put it to the test with a lean hog. Give him the fifteen bushels of malt, and he will repay you in ten score of bacon all thereabouts. But give him the seven hundred and thirty tea-messes, or rather begin to give them to him, and give him nothing else, and he is dead with hunger and bequeath you his skeleton at the end of about seven days. It is impossible to doubt in such a case. The tea-drinking has done a great deal in bringing this nation into the state of misery in which it now is, and the tea-drinking which is carried on by dribs and by drabs, by pents and farthings going out at a time, this miserable practice has been gradually introduced by the growing weight of the taxes on malts and on hops, and by the everlasting penury amongst the labourers occasioned by the paper-money. We see better prospects, however, and therefore let us now rouse ourselves and shake from us the degrading curse, the effects of which have been much more extensive and infinitely more mischievous than men in general seem to imagine. It must be evident to everyone that the practice of tea-drinking must render the frame feeble and unfit to encounter hard labour or severe weather, while, as I have shown, it deducts from the means of replenishing the belly and covering the back. Hence succeeds a softness and effeminacy, a seeking for the fireside, a lurking in the bed, and in short all the characteristics of idleness, for which in this case real want of strength furnishes an apology. The tea-drinking fills the public house, makes the frequenting of it habitual, corrupts boys as soon as they are able to move from home, and does little less for the girls, to whom the gossip of the tea-table is no bad preparatory school for the brothel. At the very least it teaches them idleness. The everlasting dawdling about with the slops of the tea-tackle gives them a relish for nothing that requires strength and activity. When they go from home they know how to do nothing that is useful—to brew, to bake, to make butter, to milk, to rear poultry, to do any earthly thing of use, they are wholly unqualified. To shut poor young creatures up in manufactories is bad enough, but there at any rate they do something that is useful. Whereas the girl that has been brought up merely to boil the tea-kettle, and to assist in the gossip inseparable from the practice, is a mere consumer of food, a pest to her employer, and a curse to her husband, if any man be so unfortunate as to fix his affections upon her. But is it in the power of any man, any good labourer who has attained the age of fifty, to look back upon the last thirty years of his life, without cursing the day in which tea was introduced into England? Where is there such a man who cannot trace to this cause a very considerable part of all the mortifications and sufferings of his life? When was he ever too late at his labour? When did he ever meet with a frown, with a turning-off and pauperism on that account, without being able to trace it to the tea-kettle? When reproached with lagging in the morning, the poor wretch tells you that he will make up for it by working during his breakfast time. I have heard this a hundred and a hundred times over. He was up, time enough, but the tea-kettle kept him lolling and lounging at home, and now, instead of sitting down to a breakfast upon bread, bacon and beer, which is to carry him on to the hour of dinner, he has to force his limbs along under the sweat of feebleness, and at dinner-time to swallow his dry bread or slake his half-feverish thirst at the pump or the brook. To the wretched tea-kettle he has to return at night, with legs hardly sufficient to maintain him, and thus he makes his miserable progress towards that death, which he finds ten or fifteen years sooner than he would have found it if he had made his wife brew beer, instead of making tea. If he now and then gladdens his heart with the drugs of the public-house, some quarrel, some accident, some illness is the probable consequence. To the affray abroad succeeds an affray at home, the mischievous example reaches the children, corrupts them or scatters them, and miseryful life is the consequence. I should now proceed to the details of brewing, but these, though they will not occupy a large space, must be put off to the second number. The custom of brewing at home has so long ceased amongst laborers, and in many cases amongst tradesmen, that it was necessary for me fully to state my reasons for wishing to see the custom revived. I shall in my next clearly explain how the operation is performed, and it will be found to be so easy a thing that I am not without hope that many tradesmen who now spend their evenings at the public-house, amidst tobacco smoke and empty noise, may be induced by the finding of better drink at home, at a quarter-part of the price, to perceive that home is by far the pleasantest place wherein to pass their hours of relaxation. My work is intended chiefly for the benefit of cottagers, who must of course have some land, for I purpose to show that a large part of the food of even a large family may be raised without any diminution of the laborers earning the broad from forty rod or a quarter of an acre of ground. But at the same time what I have to say will be applicable to larger establishments, in all the branches of domestic economy, and especially to that of providing a family with beer. The kind of beer for a laborer's family, that is to say the degree of strength, must depend on circumstances. On the numerousness of the family, on the season of the year, and various other things. But generally speaking, beer half the strength of that mentioned in paragraph 25 will be quite strong enough, for that is at least one-third stronger than the farmhouse small beer, which, however, as long experience has proved, is best suited to the purpose. A judicious laborer would probably always have some ale in his house, and have small beer for the general drink. There is no reason why he should not keep Christmas as well as the farmer, and when he is mowing, reaping, or is there any other hard work, a quart or three pints of really good fat ale a day is by no means too much. However, circumstances vary so much with different laborers, that as to the sort of beer, and the number of brewing's, and the times of brewing, no general rule can be laid down. Before I proceed to explain the uses of the several brewing utensils, I must speak of the quality of the materials of which beer is made, that is to say the malt, hops, and water. Malt varies very much in quality, as indeed it must with the quality of the barley. When good it is full of flour, and in biting a grain asunder you will find it bite easily, and see the shell thin and filled up well with flour. If it bite hard and steely, the malt is bad. There is pale malt and brown malt, but the difference in the two arises merely from the different degrees of heat employed in the drying. The main thing to attend to is this, the quantity of flour. If the barley was bad, thin or steely, whether from unripeness or blight, or any other cause, it will not malt so well, that is to say it will not send out its roots in due time, and a part of it will still be barley. Then the world is wicked enough to think, and even to say, that there are maltsters who, when they send you a bushel of malt, put a little barley amongst it, the malt being taxed, and the barley not. Let us hope that this is seldom the case, yet when we do know that this terrible system of taxation induces the beer-selling gentry to supply their customers with stuff little better than poison, it is not very uncharitable to suppose it possible, for some maltsters to yield to the temptations of the devil, so far as to play the trick above mentioned. To detect this trick, and to discover what portion of the barley is in an unmalted state, take a handful of the unground malt, and put it into a bowl of cold water. Mix it about with the water a little, that is, let every grain be just wet all over, and whatever part of them sink are not good. If you have your malt ground, there is not, as I know of, any means of detection. Therefore, if your brewing be considerable in amount, grind your own malt, the means of doing which is very easy, and neither expensive nor troublesome, as will appear when I come to speak of flour. If the barley be well-malted, there is still a variety in the quality of the malt, that is to say, a bushel of malt from fine, plump, heavy barley, will be better than the same quantity from thin and light barley. In this case, as in the case of wheat, the weight is the criterion of the quality. Only bear in mind that, as a bushel of wheat weighing sixty-two pounds is better worth six shillings, than a bushel weighing fifty-two is worth four shillings, so a bushel of malt weighing forty-five pounds is better worth nine shillings, than a bushel weighing thirty-five is worth six shillings. And malt, therefore, as in everything else, the word cheap is a deception, unless the quality be taken into view. But bear in mind that in the case of unmalted barley mixed with the malt, the weight can be no rule, for barley is heavier than malt. End of number one. Number two of Cottage Economy by William Cobbett. This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. Brewing by Philippa. Paragraphs thirty-eight to seventy-six. Brewing beer continued. As to using barley in the making of beer, I have given it a full and fair trial twice over, and I would recommend it to neither rich nor poor. The barley produces strength, though nothing like the malt, but the beer is flat, even though you use half malt and half barley, and flat beer lies heavy on the stomach, and of course, besides the bad taste, is unwholesome. To pay four shillings and sixpence tax upon every bushel of our own barley turned into malt, when the barley itself is not worth three shillings a bushel, is a horrid thing. But as long as the owners of the land shall be so dastardly as to suffer themselves to be thus deprived of the use of their estates, to favour the slave-drivers and plunderers of the East and West Indies, we must submit to the thing, incomprehensible to foreigners, and even to ourselves, as the submission may be. With regard to hops, the quality is very various, at times when some sell for five shillings a pound, others sell for sixpence. Provided the purchaser understand the article, the quality is, of course, in proportion to the price. There are two things to be considered in hops, the power of preserving beer, and that of giving it a pleasant flavour. Hops may be strong, and yet not good. They should be bright, have no leaves or bits of branches amongst them. The hop is the husk or seed-pod of the hop-vine, as the cone is that of the fir-tree, and the seeds themselves are deposited like those of the fir round a little soft stalk enveloped by the several folds of this pod or cone. If in the gathering leaves of the vine or bits of the branches are mixed with the hops, these not only help to make up the weight, but they give a bad taste to the beer, and indeed if they abound much they spoil the beer. Great attention is therefore necessary in this respect. There are two numerous sorts of hops, varying in size, form and quality, quite as much as apples. However, when they are in a state to be used in brewing, the marks of goodness are an absence of brown colour, for that indicates perished hops. A colour between green and yellow, a great quantity of the yellow farina, seeds not too large nor too hard, a clammy feel when rubbed between the fingers, and a lively pleasant smell. As to the age of hops, they retain for twenty years probably their power of preserving beer, but not of giving it a pleasant flavour. I have used them at ten years old, and should have no fear of using them at twenty. They lose none of their bitterness, none of their power of preserving beer, but they lose the other quality, and therefore in the making of fine ale or beer new hops are to be preferred. As to the quantity of hops, it is clear from what has been said that that must in some degree depend upon their quality, but supposing them to be good in quality, a pound of hops to a bushel of malt is about the quantity. A good deal, however, depends upon the length of time that the beer is intended to be kept, and upon the season of the year in which it is brewed. Beer intended to be kept a long while should have the full pound, also beer brewed in warmer weather, though for present use. Half the quantity may do under an opposite state of circumstances. The water should be soft by all means. That of brooks or rivers is best. That of a pond, fed by a rivulet or spring, will do very well. Rainwater, if just fallen, may do, but stale rainwater, or stagnant pond water, makes the beer flat and difficult to keep, and hard water from wells is very bad. It does not get the sweetness out of the malt, nor the bitterness out of the hops, like soft water, and the wort of it does not ferment well, which is a certain proof of its unfitness for the purpose. There are two descriptions of persons whom I am desirous to see brewing their own beer, namely tradesmen, and labourers and journeymen. There must therefore be two distinct scales treated of. In the former editions of this work I spoke of a machine for brewing, and stated the advantages of using it in a family of any considerable consumption of beer, but while from my desire to promote private brewing I strongly recommended the machine, I stated that, if any of my readers could point out any method by which we should be more likely to restore the practice of private brewing and especially to the cottage, I should be greatly obliged to have them communicate it to me. Such communications have been made, and I am very happy to be able, in this new edition of my little work, to avail myself of them. There was, in the patent machine, always an objection on account of the expense, for even the machine for one bushel of malt cost, at the reduced price, eight pounds, a sum far above the reach of a cottager, and even above that of a small tradesman. Its convenience, especially in towns where room is so valuable, was an object of great importance, but there were disadvantages attending it, which, until after some experience I did not ascertain. It will be remembered that the method by the brewing machine requires the malt to be put into the cold water, and for the water to make the malt swim, or at least to be in such proportion as to prevent the fire beneath from burning the malt. We found that our beer was flat, and that it did not keep, and this arose, I have every reason to believe, from this process. The malt should be put into hot water, and the water at first should be but just sufficient in quantity to stir the malt in and separate it well. Nevertheless, when it is merely to make small beer, beer not wanted to keep, in such cases the brewing machine may be of use, and, as will be seen by and by, a movable boiler, which has nothing to do with the patent, may in many cases be of great convenience and utility. The two scales of which I have spoken above are now to be spoken of, and that I may explain my meaning more clearly. I shall suppose that, for the tradesman's family, it will be requisite to brew 18 gallons of ale and 36 of small beer, to fill three casks of 18 gallons each. It will be observed, of course, that for larger quantities, larger utensils of all sorts will be wanted. I take this quantity as the one to give directions on. The utensils wanted here will be, first, a copper that will contain forty gallons at least, for, though there be to be but thirty-six gallons of small beer, there must be space for the hops, and for the liquor that goes off in steam. Second, a mashing tub to contain sixty gallons, for the malt is to be in this, along with the water. Third, an underbuck, or shallow tub, to go under the mash tub, for the wort to run into when drawn from the grains. Fourth, a tonne tub that will contain thirty gallons, to put the ale into to work, the mash tub, as we shall see, serving as a tonne tub for the small beer. Besides these, a couple of coolers, shallow tubs, which may be the heads of wine-butts, or some such things, about a foot deep, or if you have four it may be as well, in order to affect the cooling more quickly. You may begin by filling the copper with water, and next by making the water boil. You then put into the mashing tub water sufficient to stir and separate the malt in. But now let me say more particularly what this mashing tub is. It is, as you know, to contain sixty gallons. It is to be a little broader at top than at bottom, and not quite so deep as it is wide across the bottom. Into the middle of the bottom there is a hole about two inches over to draw the wort off through. In this hole goes a stick a foot or two longer than the tub is high. This stick is to be about two inches through, and tapered for about eight inches upwards at the end that goes into the hole, which at last it fills up closely as a cork. Upon the hole, before anything else be put into the tub, you may lay a little bundle of fine birch, heath or straw may do, about half the bulk of a birch broom, and well tied at both ends. This being laid over the hole, to keep back the grains as the wort goes out, you put the tapered end of the stick down through into the hole, and thus cork the hole up. You must then have something of weight sufficient to keep the birch steady at the bottom of the tub, with a hole through it to slip down the stick, otherwise when the stick is raised it will be apt to raise the birch with it, and when you are stirring the mash you would move it from its place. The best thing for this purpose will be a leaden collar for the stick, with the hole in the collar plenty large enough, and it should weigh three or four pounds. The thing they use in some farmhouses is the iron box of a wheel. Anything will do that will slide down the stick, and lie with weight enough on the birch to keep it from moving. Now then, you are ready to begin brewing. I allow two bushels of malt for the brewing I have supposed. You must now put into the mashing-tub as much boiling water as will be sufficient to stir the malt in and separate it well. But here occur some of the nicest points of all, namely the degree of heat that the water is to be at before you put in the malt. This heat is one hundred and seventy degrees by the thermometer. If you have a thermometer this is ascertained easily, but without one, take this rule, by which so much good beer has been made in England for hundreds of years. When you can, by looking down into the tub, see your face clearly in the water, the water is become cool enough, and you must not put the malt in before. Now put in the malt and stir it well in the water. To perform this stirring, which is very necessary, you have a stick somewhat bigger than a broomstick, with two or three smaller sticks, eight or ten inches long, put through the lower end of it, at about three or four inches asunder, and sticking out on each side of the long stick. These small cross-sticks serve to search the malt and separate it well in the stirring or mashing. Thus then the malt is in, and in this state it should continue for about a quarter of an hour. In the meanwhile you will have filled up your copper and made it boil, and now, at the end of the quarter of an hour, you put in boiling water sufficient to give you your eighteen gallons of ale. But perhaps you must have thirty gallons of water in the hull, for the grains will retain at least ten gallons of water, and it is better to have rather too much work than too little. When your proper quantity of water is in, stir the malt again well. Cover the mashing-tub over with sacks or something that will answer the same purpose, and there let the mash stand for two hours. When it has stood the two hours you draw off the work. And now, mind, the mashing-tub is placed on a couple of stools or on something that will enable you to put the underbuck under it, so as to receive the work as it comes out of the hull before mentioned. When you have put the underbuck in its place, you let the work out by pulling up the stick that corks the hull. But observe, this stick, which goes six or eight inches through the hull, must be raised by degrees, and the work must be let out slowly in order to keep back the sediment, so that it is necessary to have something to keep the stick up at the point where you are to raise it, and wish to fix it out for the time. To do this, the simplest, cheapest, and best thing in the world is a cleft stick. Take a rod of ash, hazel, birch, or almost any wood. Let it be a foot or two longer than your mashing-tub is wide over the top, split it as if for making hoops, tie it round with a string at each end, lay it across your mashing-tub, pull it open in the middle, and let the upper part of the work stick through it, and when you raise that stick, by degrees as before directed, the cleft stick will hold it up at whatever height you please. When you have drawn off the alework, you proceed to put into the mashing-tub water for the small beer. But I shall go on with my directions about the ale till I've got it into the cask and cellar, and shall then return to the small beer. As you draw off the alework into the underbuck, you must lay it out of that into the tuntub, for which work, as well as for various other purposes in the brewing, you must have a boldish with a handle to it. The underbuck will not hold the whole of the wort. It is, as before described, a shallow tub to go under the mashing-tub to draw off the wort into. Out of this underbuck you must lay the alework into the tuntub, and there it must remain till your copper be emptied and ready to receive it. The copper being empty, you put the wort into it, and put in after the wort, or before it, a pound and a half of good hops, well rubbed and separated as you put them in. You now make the copper boil, and keep it with the lid off at a good brisk boil for a full hour, and if it be an hour and a half it is none the worse. When the boiling is done, put out your fire, and put the liquor into the coolers. But it must be put into the coolers without the hops. Therefore, in order to get the hops out of the liquor, you must have a strainer. The best for your purpose is a small clothes-basket or any other wicker-basket. You set your coolers in the most convenient place. It may be indoors or out of doors as most convenient. You lay a couple of sticks across one of the coolers, and put the basket upon them. Put your liquor, hops and oil, into the basket, which will keep back the hops. When you have got liquor enough in one cooler, you go to another with your sticks and basket, till you have got all your liquor out. If you find your liquor deeper in one cooler than the other, you can make an alteration in that respect, till you have the liquor so distributed as to cool equally fast in both or all the coolers. The next stage of the liquor is in the tonne-tub, where it is set to work. Now a very great point is the degree of heat that the liquor is to be at when it is set to working. The proper heat is seventy degrees, so that a thermometer makes this matter sure. In the country they determine the degree of heat by merely putting a finger into the liquor. Seventy degrees is but just warm, a gentle luke warmth, nothing like heat. A little experience makes perfectness in such a matter. When at the proper heat, or nearly, for the liquor will cool a little in being removed, put it into the tonne-tub. And now, before I speak of the act of setting the beer to work, I must describe this tonne-tub, which I first mentioned in paragraph forty-two. It is to hold thirty gallons, as you have seen, and nothing is better than an old cask of that size, or somewhat larger, with the head taken out or cut off. But indeed any tub of sufficient dimensions, and of about the same depth, proportion to the width, as a cask or barrel has, will do for the purpose. Having put the liquor into the tonne-tub, you must put in the yeast. About half a pint of good yeast is sufficient. This should first be put into a thing of some sort that will hold about a gallon of your liquor. The thing should then be nearly filled with liquor, and with a stick or spoon you should mix the yeast well with the liquor in this bowl, or other thing, and stir in, along with the yeast, a handful of wheat or rye flour. This mixture is then to be poured out clean into the tonne-tub, and the whole mass of the liquor is then to be agitated well by lading up and pouring down again with your boldish, till the yeast be well mixed with the liquor. Some people do the thing in another manner. They mix up the yeast and flour with some liquor, as just mentioned, taken out of the coolers, and then they set the little vessel that contains this mixture down on the bottom of the tonne-tub, and leaving it there, put the liquor out of the coolers into the tonne-tub. Being placed at the bottom and having the liquor poured on it, the mixture is perhaps more perfectly affected in this way than in any way. The flour may not be necessary, but as the country people use it it is doubtless of some use, for their hereditary experience has not been for nothing. When your liquor is thus properly put into the tonne-tub and set a working, cover over the top of the tub by laying across it a sack or two, or something that will answer the purpose. We now come to the last stage, the cask or barrel. But I must first speak of the place for the tonne-tub to stand in. The place should be such as to avoid too much warmth all cold. The air should, if possible, be at about fifty-five degrees, any cool place in summer and any warmish place in winter. If the weather be very cold some cloths or sacks should be put round the tonne-tub while the beer is working. In about six or eight hours a frothy head will rise upon the liquor, and it will keep rising more or less slowly for about forty-eight hours. But the length of time required for the working depends on various circumstances, so that no precise time can be fixed. The best way is to take off the froth, which is indeed yeast, at the end of about twenty-four hours with a common skimmer, and put it into a pan or vessel of some sort. Then in twelve hours' time take it off again in the same way, and so on, till the liquor has done working and sends up no more yeast. Then it is beer, and when it is quite cold for ale or strong beer, put it into the cask by means of a funnel. It must be cold before you do this, or it will be what the country people call foxt, that is to say, have a rank and disagreeable taste. Now, as to the cask, it must be sound and sweet. I thought when writing the former edition of this work that the bell-shaped were the best casks. I am now convinced that that was an error. The bell-shaped, by contracting the width of the top of the beer as that top descends in consequence of the draft for use, certainly prevents the head, which always gathers on beer as soon as you begin to draw it off, from breaking and mixing in amongst the beer. This is an advantage in the bell-shape. But then the bell-shape, which places the widest end of the cask uppermost, exposes the cask to the admission of external air much more than the other shape. This danger approaches from the ends of the cask, and in the bell-shape you have the broadest end wholly exposed the moment you have drawn out the first gallon of beer, which is not the case with the casks of the common shape. Directions are given in the case of the bell casks to put a damp sand on the top to keep out the air, but it is very difficult to make this effectual, and yet if you do not keep out the air your beer will be flat, and when flat it really is good for nothing but the pigs. It is very difficult to fill the bell cask, which you will easily see if you consider its shape. It must be placed on the level with the greatest possible truth, or there will be a space left, and to place it with such truth is perhaps as difficult a thing as a mason or bricklayer ever had to perform, and yet if this be not done there will be an empty space in the cask, though it may at the same time run over. With the common casks there are none of these difficulties. A common eye will see when it is well placed, and at any rate any little vacant space that may be left is not at an end of the cask, and will without great carelessness be so small as to be of no consequence. We now come to the act of putting in the beer. The cask should be placed on a stand with legs about a foot long. The cask, being round, must have a little wedge or block on each side to keep it steady. Bricks do very well. Bring your beer down into the cellar in buckets, and pour it in through the funnel until the cask be full. The cask should lean a little on one side when you fill it, because the beer will work again here, and send more yeast out of the bung-hole, and if the cask were not a little on one side the yeast would flow over both sides of the cask, and would not descend in one stream into a pan put underneath to receive it. Here the bell cask is extremely inconvenient, for the yeast works up all over the head, and cannot run off, and makes a very nasty affair. This alone, to say nothing of the other disadvantages, would decide the question against the bell casks. Something will go off in this working, which may continue for two or three days. When you put the beer in the cask, you should have a gallon or two left to keep filling up with as the working produces emptiness. At last, when the working is completely over, write the cask, that is to say, block it up to its level. Put in a handful of fresh hops, fill the cask quite full, put in the bung with a bit of coarse linen stuff round it, hammer it down tight, and, if you like, fill a coarse bag with sand, and lay it well pressed down over the bung. As to the length of time that you are to keep the beer before you begin to use it, that must in some measure depend on taste. Such beer as this ale will keep almost any length of time. As to the mode of tapping, that is as easy almost as drinking. When the cask is empty, great care must be taken to caulk it tightly up so that no air gets in, for if it do the cask is moulded, and when once moulded it is spoiled for ever, it is never again fit to be used about beer. Before the cask be used again, the grounds must be poured out, and the cask cleaned by several times scalding, by putting in stones or a chain, and rolling and shaking about till it be quite clean. Here again the round casks have the decided advantage, it being almost impossible to make the bell casks thoroughly clean without taking the head out, which is both troublesome and expensive, as it cannot be well done by anyone but a cooper, who is not always at hand, and who when he is must be paid. I have now done with the ale, and it remains for me to speak of the small beer. In paragraph 47, which now see, I left you drawing off the ale-wort, and with your copper full of boiling water. Thirty-six gallons of that boiling water are, as soon as you have got your ale-wort out, and have put down your mash-tub stick to close up the hole at the bottom, as soon as you have done this, thirty-six gallons of the boiling water are to go into the mashing-tub. The grains are to be well stirred up as before, the mashing-tub is to be covered over again, as mentioned in paragraph 43, and the mash is to stand in that state for an hour, and not two hours, as for the ale-wort. When the small beer-mash has stood its hour, draw it off, as in paragraph 47, and put it into the ton-tub, as you did the ale-wort. By this time your copper will be empty again by putting your ale-licker to cool, as mentioned in paragraph 47, and you now put the small beer-wort into the copper, with the hops that you used before, and with half a pound of fresh hops added to them, and this liquor you boil briskly for an hour. By this time you will have taken the grains and the sediment clean out of the mashing-tub, and taken out the bunch of birch twigs, and made all clean. Now put in the birch twigs again, and put down your stick as before. Lay your two or three sticks across the mashing-tub, put your basket on them, and take your liquor from the copper, putting the fire out first, and pour it into the mashing-tub through the basket. Take the basket away, throw the hops to the dung hill, and leave the small beer liquid to cool in the mashing-tub. Here it is to remain to be set to working, as mentioned for the ale, in paragraph 48. Only in this case you will want more yeast in proportion, and should have for your thirty-six gallons of small beer three half-pints of good yeast. Proceed as to all the rest of the business, as with the ale. Only in the case of the small beer it should be put into the cask not quite cold, but a little warm, or else it will not work at all in the barrel, which it ought to do. It will not work so strongly or so long as the ale, and may be put in the barrel much sooner, in general the next day after it is brewed. All the utensils should be well cleaned and put away as soon as they are done with, the little things as well as the great ones, for it is loss of time to make new ones. And now let us see the expense of these utensils, the copper new five pounds, the mashing-tub new thirty shillings, the ton-tub not new five shillings, the underbark and three coolers not new twenty shillings. The whole cost is seven pounds ten shillings, which is ten shillings less than the one bushel machine. I am now in a farmhouse where the same set of utensils has been used for forty years, and the owner tells me that with the same use they may last for forty years longer. The machine will not, I think, last four years if in anything like regular use. It is of sheet iron, tinned on the inside, and this tin rusts exceedingly, and is not to be kept clean without such rubbing as must soon take off the tin. The great advantage of the machine is that it can be removed. You can brew without a brew-house. You can set the boiler up against any fireplace or any window. You can brew under a cart shed and even out of doors. But all this may be done with these utensils if your copper be movable. Make the boiler of copper and not of sheet iron, and fix it on a stand with a fireplace and stove pipe, and then you have the hole to brew out of doors as well as within doors, which is a very great convenience. Now, with regard to the other scale of brewing, little need to be said because all the principles being the same, the utensils only are to be proportioned to the quantity. If only one sort of beer be to be brewed at a time, all the difference is that in order to extract the whole of the goodness of the malt, the mashing ought to be out twice. The two works then put together, and then you boil them together with the hops. A correspondent at Morpeth says, the whole of the utensils used by him are a twenty-gallon pot, a mashing tub that also answers for a tuntub, and a shallow tub for a cooler, and that these are plenty for a person who is anything of a contriver. This is very true, and these things will cost no more perhaps than forty shillings. A nine-gallon cask of beer can be brewed very well with such utensils. Indeed it is what used to be done by almost every labouring man in the kingdom, until the high price of malt and comparatively low price of wages rendered the people too poor and miserable to be able to brew at all. A correspondent at Bristol has obligingly sent me the model of utensils for brewing on a small scale, but as they consist chiefly of brittleware, I am of the opinion that they would not so well answer the purpose. Indeed, as to the country labourers, all they want is the ability to get the malt. Mr. Elman, in his evidence before the Agricultural Committee, said that when he began farming forty-five years ago there was not a labourer's family in the parish that did not brew their own beer and enjoy it by their own firesides, and that now not one single family did it from want of ability to get the malt. It is the tax that prevents their getting the malt, for the barley is cheap enough. The tax causes a monopoly in the hands of the maltsters, who, when the tax is two and sixpence, make the malt cost seven and sixpence, though the barley cost but two and sixpence, and though the malt, tax and all, ought to cost him but five and sixpence. If the tax were taken off, this pernicious monopoly would be destroyed. The reader will easily see that, in proportion to the quantity wanted to be brewed, must be the size of the utensils, but I may observe here that the above utensils are sufficient for three or even four bushels of malt if stronger beer be wanted. When it is necessary, in case of falling short, in the quantity wanted to fill up the ale cask, some may be taken from the small beer, but upon the whole brewing there ought to be no falling short, because if the casks be not filled up, the beer will not be good and certainly will not keep. Great care should be taken as to the cleansing of the casks. They should be made perfectly sweet, or it is impossible to have good beer. The cellar for beer to keep any length of time should be cool. Under a hill is the best place for a cellar, but at any rate a cellar of good depth and dry. At certain times of the year, beer that is kept long will ferment. The vent pegs must in such cases be loosened a little, and afterwards fastened. Small beer may be tapped almost directly. It is a sort of joke that it should see a Sunday, but that it may do before it be two days old. In short any beer is better than water, but it should have some strength and some weeks of age at any rate. I cannot conclude this essay without expressing my pleasure that a law has been recently passed to authorise the general retail of beer. This really seems necessary to prevent the king's subjects from being poisoned. The brewers and porter-quacks have carried their tricks to such an extent that there is no safety for those who drink brewers' beer. The best and most effectual thing is, however, for people to brew their own beer. To enable them and induce them to do which, I have done all that lies in my power. A longer treatise on the subject would have been of no use. These few plain directions will suffice for those who have a disposition to do the thing, and those who have not would remain unmoved by anything that I could say. There seems to be a great number of things to do in brewing, but the greater part of them require only about a minute each. A brewing, such as I have given the detail of above, may be completed in a day, but by the word day I mean to include the morning, beginning at four o'clock. The putting of the beer into barrel is not more than an hour's work for a servant woman, or a tradesman's or a farmer's wife. There is no heavy work, no work too heavy for a woman in any part of the business, otherwise I would not recommend it to be performed by the women, who, though so amiable in themselves, are never quite so amiable as when they are useful. And as to beauty, though men may fall in love with girls at play, there is nothing to make them stand to their love, like seeing them at work. In conclusion of these remarks on beer brewing, I once more express my most anxious desire to see abolished for ever the accursed tax on malt, which I verily believe has done more harm to the people of England than was ever done to any people by plague, pestilence, famine, and civil war. In paragraph seventy-six, in paragraph one hundred and eight, and perhaps in another place or two of the last edition, I spoke of the machine for brewing. The work being stereotyped, it would have been troublesome to alter those paragraphs, but of course the public in reading them will bear in mind what has been now said relative to the machine. The inventor of that machine deserves great praise for his efforts to promote private brewing, and, as I said before, in certain confined situations, where the beer is to be merely small beer, and for immediate use, and where time and room are of such importance as to make the cost of the machine comparatively of trifling consideration, the machine may possibly be found to be an useful utensil. Having stated the inducements to the brewing of beer, and given the plainest directions that I was able to give for the doing of the thing, I shall next proceed to the subject of bread. But this subject is too large and of too much moment to be treated with brevity, and must therefore be put off till my next number. I cannot in the meanwhile dismiss the subject of brewing beer without once more adverting to its many advantages, as set forth in the foregoing number of this work. The following instructions for the making of porter will clearly show what sort of stuff is sold at public houses in London, and we may pretty fairly suppose that the public house beer in the country is not superior to it in quality. A quarter of malt, with these ingredients, will make five barrels of good porter. Take one quarter of high-coloured malt, eight pounds of hops, nine pounds of treacle, eight pounds of colour, eight pounds of sliced licorice root, two drams of salt of tartar, two ounces of Spanish licorice, and half an ounce of capsicum. The author says that he merely gives the ingredients as used by many persons. This extract is taken from a book on brewing recently published in London. What a curious composition! What a mess of drugs! But if the brewers openly avow this, what have we to expect from the secret practices of them, and the retailers of the article? When we know that beer doctor and brewer's druggist are professions practised as openly as those of bug-man and rat-killer, are we simple enough to suppose that the above-named are the only drugs that people swallow in those potions which they call pots of beer? Indeed, we know the contrary. For scarcely a week passes without witnessing the detection of some greedy wretch who has used in making or in doctoring his beer drugs forbidden by the law. And it is not many weeks since one of these was convicted in the court of excise for using potent and dangerous drugs by the means of which, and a suitable quantity of water, he made two butts of beer into three. Upon this occasion it appeared that no less than ninety of these worthy's were in the habit of pursuing the same practice. The drugs are not unpleasant to the taste, they sting the palate, they give a present relish, they communicate a momentary acceleration, but they give no force to the body, which on the contrary they infeable and in many instances with time destroy, producing diseases from which the drinker would otherwise have been free to the end of his days. But look again at the receipt for making porter. Here are eight bushels of malt to a hundred and eighty gallons of beer, that is to say twenty-five gallons from the bushel. Now the malt is eight shillings of bushel, and eight pounds of the very best hops will cost but a shilling a pound. The malt and hops then for the one hundred and eighty gallons cost but seventy-two shillings, that is to say only a little more than four-and-three farthings a gallon, for stuff which is now retailed for sixteen pence a gallon. If this is not an abomination I should be glad to know what is. Even if the treacle, colour and the drugs be included the cost is not five pence a gallon, and yet not content with this enormous extortion there are wretches who resort to the use of other and pernicious drugs in order to increase their gains. To provide against this dreadful evil there is and there can be no law, for it is created by the law. The law it is that imposes the enormous tax on the malt and hops. The law it is that imposes the license tax, and places the power of granting the license at the discretion of persons appointed by the government. The law it is that checks in this way the private brewing, and that prevents free and fair competition in the selling of beer, and as long as the law does these it will in vain endeavour to prevent the people from being destroyed by slow poison. Enumerable other benefits that would arise from a repeal of the taxes on malt and on hops. Tippling houses might then be shut up with justice and propriety. The labourer, the artisan, the tradesman, the landlord all would instantly feel the benefit. But the landlord more perhaps in this case than any other member of the community. The four or five pounds a year which the day labourer now drizzles away in tea-messes he would divide with the farmer if he had untaxed beer. His wages would fall and fall to his advantage too. The fall of wages would be not less than forty pounds upon a hundred acres, thus forty pounds would go in the end, a fourth perhaps to the farmer, and three-fourths to the landlord. This is the kind of work to reduce poor rapes and to restore husbandry to prosperity. Undertaken this work must be and performed too. But whether we shall see this until the estates have passed away from the present race of landlords is a question which must be referred to time. Surely we may hope that when the American farmers shall see this little essay they will begin seriously to think of leaving off the use of the liver-burning and palsy-producing spirits. Their climate indeed is something extremely hot in one part of the year and extremely cold in the other part of it. Nevertheless they may have and do have very good beer if they will. Negligence is the greatest impediment in their way. I like the Americans very much, and that, if there were no other, would be a reason for my not hiding their faults. End of number two.