“‘My eldest unmarried daughter keeps my domestic accounts most beautifully, and audits those of any of the people I employ, with the object of impressing on them the advantages of economy. I have intimated to my children, that in proportion as they save they shall inherit. This may be an excess of paternal government in the estimation of many, but it has had a most beneficial effect. My family are so methodical and self-denying that they are said to realise some people’s idea of Quakers; but I have had little intercourse with that sect. The success of my own offspring, and the prosperity of my household and establishment, as you remarked to me, seemed to be due to an exceptional combination of qualities and circumstances—in my wife and myself in the first instance, and, secondly, in those I employ, who are somewhat like myself. This is true, I will admit; but it does not militate against the great principle as laid down in the Bible, that ‘the hand of the diligent maketh rich,’ that ‘industry has its sure reward,’ and that those who honour their parents shall receive blessing. I have done more for my parents than all my brothers and sisters united, and I have received more blessing than all my brothers and sisters united. Pardon my egotism. “‘I will give you a few facts of vegetarians in our county. A squire and magistrate, with £2,000 a-year, used to spend £1,500 as a flesh-eater; he new spends £1,150, and is more comfortable, as a vegetarian. A barrister, whose doctor assured him that he should take three meals of meat and a bottle of wine daily for his health’s sake, now finds that by a vegetarian and temperance diet his expenses are reduced more than one-half, his health is better, and there is a corresponding increase of vigour and power of sustaining labour, such as he never before knew. A struggling clergyman, whom custom induced, he called it ‘compelled,’ to take three meals of meat daily, was under this system always in debt, and obliged to send the churchwardens, round every Christmas to ask for means to pay his way: now, on the vegetarian diet, he balances his income and expenditure, and is able to carry forward a few pounds every quarter. I believe, from more than forty years’ experience of the vegetarian diet, that were it generally adopted, nine-tenths of the pauperism and crime would disappear, that England would be able to supply herself with all the home-grown corn she requires, and that the national debt, if deemed desirable, could be paid off in thirty years.