good boiled on the fourth day, especially in winter.

I have reckoned upon a medium, that a child just born will weigh 12
pounds, and in a solar year if tolerably nursed increaseth to 28 pounds.

I grant this food will be somewhat dear, and therefore very proper for
landlords, who, as they have already devoured most of the parents, seem
to have the best title to the children.

Infants' flesh will be in season throughout the year, but more plentiful
in March, and a little before and after, for we are told by a grave
author an eminent French physician, that fish being a prolific diet,
there are more children born in Roman Catholic countries about nine
months after Lent, than at any other season; therefore reckoning a year
after Lent, the markets will be more glutted than usual, because the
number of Popish infants, is at least three to one in this kingdom, and
therefore it will have one other collateral advantage by lessening the
number of Papists among us.

I have already computed the charge of nursing a beggar's child (in which
list I reckon all cottagers, labourers, and four-fifths of the farmers)
to be about two shillings _per annum_, rags included, and I believe no
gentleman would repine to give ten shillings for the carcass of a good
fat child, which, as I have said will make four dishes of excellent
nutritive meat, when he hath only some particular friend, or his own
family to dine with him. Thus the Squire will learn to be a good
landlord, and grow popular among his tenants, the mother will have eight
shillings net profit, and be fit for work till she produces another
child.

Those who are more thrifty (as I must confess the times require) may
flay the carcass; the skin of which, artificially dressed, will make
admirable gloves for ladies, and summer boots for fine gentlemen.

As to our City of Dublin, shambles may be appointed for this purpose, in
the most convenient parts of it, and butchers we may be assured will not
be wanting, although I rather recommend buying the children alive, and
dressing them hot from the knife, as we do roasting pigs.

A very worthy person, a true lover of his country, and whose virtues I
highly esteem, was lately pleased, in discoursing on this matter, to
offer a refinement upon my scheme. He said, that many gentlemen of this
kingdom, having of late destroyed their deer, he conceived that the want
of venison might be well supplied by the bodies of young lads and
maidens, not e