“In regard to the _London baker_, ask him of what parts of the wheat his bread is made, and he frankly acknowledges he cannot tell; and how should he? He can buy only what is to be sold; and the quality is not ascertained with any such precision as to enable him to answer the question. He, _poor man_ does the best he can, not to give a sweet wholesome aliment, but something which is _white_. He knows that bread made of a proper proportion of the wheat, not only differs in colour, but is moister at the end of eight days than _his_ the third day; he likewise knows that it is sweeter, and has the native grateful flavour of the wheat, as the God of Nature hath given it, and not as it hath been adulterated.” “If the parliament had required us to eat plum-cake, seed-cake, or sugar-cake, we should have known that plums, seed, and sugar, constituted the difference; but from the moment the law made distinctions in the division of the flour for three different kinds of bread for common use, we were exposed to the mercy of the miller to give the baker what he pleased, and call it by what name he pleased; we could only judge whether the bread pleased us or not. The miller and the baker divide and subdivide; and instead of flour for bread, and the bran that remained, according to ancient practice, whereby the beggar as well as the prince was pleased, _bread_ became a mystery, and we no longer knew what we were eating.” “Our misfortune, in regard to bread, is, that we eat it too fine; we decline the use of barley in bread, having hardly enough for beer. Oats and pease are rejected: at length we reject even _wheaten flour_,—unless we are supplied with the finest parts only!—What will befall us in the end?” “_Custom_ often makes a law more forcible than _Law-givers_, and we have now to contend with _custom_.—The first consideration should be, that the _flour_ which represents _three-fourths of the wheat_, shall be really such, and brought to market in sacks, marked _Standard_: the value of it may be more easily ascertained, than that of which is made the wheaten bread we now eat.”