“I would willingly offer to candid and benevolent men a few hints on this important subject, proposing a few questions, and adding to each what seems to be the plain and direct answer. “I. 1. I ask first, Why are thousands of people starving, perishing for want, in every part of England? The fact I know: I have seen it with my eyes, in every corner of the land. I have known those who could only afford to eat a little coarse food every other day. I have known one picking up stinking sprats from a dunghill, and carrying them home for herself and her children. I have known another gathering the bones which the dogs had left in the streets, and making broth of them, to prolong a wretched life. Such is the case, at this day, of multitudes of people, in a land flowing, as it were, with milk and honey; abounding with all the necessaries, the conveniences, the superfluities of life! “Now why is this? Why have all these nothing to 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 London, in Bristol, in Norwich, in every county from one end of England 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 anything else. “3. But to descend from generals to particulars. Why is breadcorn 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 week, that is, above twelve hundred and fifty thousand quarters a year, consumed in and about London! Add the distillers 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 and life, but also the morals of our countrymen!