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eat? Because they have nothing to do. They have no meat, because they have no work.
2. But why have they no work? Why are so many thousand people in Scotland, England, and Ireland, in every county from one end of the kingdom to the other, utterly destitute of employment.
Because the persons who used to employ them cannot afford to do it any longer. Many who employed fifty men, now scarce employ ten, those who employed twenty, now employ one or none at all. They cannot, as they have no vent for their goods; food now bearing so high a price, that the generality of people are hardly able to buy any thing else.
3. But, to descend from generals to particulars, why is bread-corn so dear?
Because such immense quantities of it are continually consumed by distilling. Indeed an eminent distiller near London, hearing this, warmly replied, "Nay my partner and I generally distil but a thousand quarters of corn a week." Perhaps so: suppose five and twenty distillers, in and near the town, consume each only the same quantity: here are five and twenty thousand quarters a-year, consumed in and about London! Add the distilleries throughout England; and have we not reason to believe, that half of the wheat produced in the kingdom, is every year consumed, not by so harmless a way as throwing it into the sea, but by converting it into deadly poison: poison that naturally destroys, not only the strength, health, and life, but also the morals of our countrymen!
"Well, but this brings in a very large revenue to the King." Is this an equivalent for the lives of his subjects? Would his Majesty sell an hundred thousand of his subjects yearly to Algiers. for ten hundred thousand pounds? Surely no. Will he then sell them for that sum, to be butchered by their own country
