Man is so constituted as to require above all else food and drink. So it is no wonder if I speak of victualers, whose principle it is to deceive and to practice fraud. I will begin, as an instance, with the tavern-keeper and his wine-cellar.... If his red or white wine loses its proper color, he mixes it freely to procure the proper shade.... If I stop in to fill my flask, he gives me of his best wine to taste, and then fills my flask with some cheap stuff. He pretends to have any foreign vintage that one desires, but under divers names he draws ten kinds from the same barrel.... The poor people complain with reason that their beer is made from an inferior quality of grain, while good beer is almost as dear as wine. If you give an order for beer to be delivered at the house, the inn-keeper will send a good quality once or twice until he gets your trade, and then he sends worse at the same price.... Every one in the city is complaining of the short-weight loaves the bakers sell, and wheat is stored with the intention to boost the price of bread.... Whether you buy at wholesale or retail, you have to pay the butcher twice the right price for beef and lamb. Lean beef is fattened by larding it, but the skewers are left in and ruin the carver’s knife.... To fetch their price, butchers often hold back meat until it is bad, when they try to sell it rather than cast it to the dogs.... Poulterers sell as fresh game what has been killed ten days before(!)... For my own part, I can dispense with partridges, pheasants, and plovers. But capons and geese are almost as high nowadays as hens. Yet, if all those of whom I have spoken agreed to be fair and just, there would still be unfairness in the world. For even laborers are unfair, and will not willingly subject themselves to what is reasonable, claiming high wages for little work; they want five or six shillings for the work they formerly did for two. In old times workingmen did not expect to eat wheat bread, but were satisfied with coarser bread and with water to drink, regarding cheese and milk as a treat. I cannot find one servant of that sort now in the market (_i. e._, intelligence office!). They are all extravagant in their dress, and it would be easier to satisfy two gentlemen than one such ill-bred servant. They are neither faithful, polite, or well-behaved. Many are too proud to serve like their fathers.... The fault lies with the lethargy of the gentry, who pay no heed to this folly of the lower classes; but, unless care be taken, these tares will soon spring up, and the insurgence of these classes is to be feared like a flood or a fire.