80. I have here spoken of a large quantity of each of the sorts of food. I will now come to a comparative view, more immediately applicable to a labourer's family. When wheat is _ten_ shillings the bushel, potatoes, bought at best hand, (I am speaking of the country generally,) are about _two_ shillings (English) a bushel. Last spring the average price of wheat might be _six and sixpence_, (English;) and the average price of potatoes (in small quantities) was about _eighteen-pence_; though, by the wagon-load, I saw potatoes bought at a _shilling_ (English) a bushel, to give to sheep; then, observe, these were of the coarsest kind, and the farmer had to fetch them at a considerable expense. I think, therefore, that I give the advantage to the potatoes when I say that they sell, upon an average, for full a _fifth_ part as much as the wheat sells for, per bushel, while they contain four pounds less weight than the bushel of wheat; while they yield only five pounds and a half of nutritious matter equal to bread; and while the bushel of wheat will yield _sixty-five pounds of bread_, besides the ten pounds of bran. Hence it is clear, that, instead of that _saving_, which is everlastingly dinned in our ears, from the use of potatoes, there is a _waste of more than one half_; seeing that, when wheat is _ten shillings_ (English) the bushel, you can have _sixty-five pounds of bread for the ten shillings_; and can have out of potatoes only five pounds and a half of nutritious matter equal to bread for _two shillings_! (English.) This being the case, I trust that we shall soon hear no more of those _savings_ which the labourer makes by the use of potatoes; I hope we shall, in the words of Dr. DRENNAN, "leave Ireland to her _lazy_ root," if she choose still to adhere to it. It is the root, also, of slovenliness, filth, misery, and slavery; its cultivation has increased in England with the increase of the paupers: both, I thank God, are upon the decline. Englishmen seem to be upon the return to beer and bread, from water and potatoes: and, therefore, I shall now proceed to offer some observations to the cottager, calculated to induce him to bake his own bread.