Henry Thompson; but I hardly think the question will be allowed to rest in the position where he seems to wish to leave it. “Unnecessary, but sometimes desirable,” is hardly the last word to be said on the subject of butchers’ meat. Unnecessary it certainly is. But is it desirable? There is a good deal to be said on that point, too!
The question of economy in diet is just hinted at, and no more, in Sir Henry Thompson’s article. Yet surely, at the present time, when a social crisis seems to be impending at no distant date, owing to the terrible destitution of the lower classes, it is a question worthy of the most earnest consideration of every thoughtful man. Every housekeeper knows to her cost that butcher’s bills form the most serious item of the weekly account, and the sum total spent by the nation on this form of food is something enormous. On the other hand, it is equally indisputable that there are many cheap kinds of vegetable food which are as nutritive or more nutritive than flesh meat ; and it has repeatedly been shown that every shilling spent on beef or mutton might have purchased five or six times the amount of nutriment if expended on peas,
