at so cheap, as fish?
What then so properly the food of the poor? So in many places they are,
and so might they always be in great cities, which are always situated
near the sea, or on the conflux of large rivers. How comes it then, to
look no farther abroad for instances, that in our city of London the
case is so far otherwise that, except that of sprats, there is not one
poor palate in a hundred that knows the taste of fish?

It is true indeed that this taste is generally of such excellent flavor
that it exceeds the power of French cookery to treat the palates of
the rich with anything more exquisitely delicate; so that was fish the
common food of the poor it might put them too much upon an equality with
their betters in the great article of eating, in which, at present, in
the opinion of some, the great difference in happiness between man and
man consists. But this argument I shall treat with the utmost disdain:
for if ortolans were as big as buzzards, and at the same time as plenty
as sparrows, I should hold it yet reasonable to indulge the poor with
the dainty, and that for this cause especially, that the rich would soon
find a sparrow, if as scarce as an ortolan, to be much the greater, as
it would certainly be the rarer, dainty of the two.

Vanity or scarcity will be always the favorite of luxury; but honest
hunger will be satisfied with plenty. Not to search deeper into the
cause of the evil, I should think it abundantly sufficient to propose
the remedies of it. And, first, I humbly submit the absolute necessity
of immediately hanging all the fishmongers within the bills of
mortality; and, however it might have been some time ago the opinion of
mild and temporizing men that the evil complained of might be removed by
gentler methods, I suppose at this day there are none who do not see the
impossibility of using such with any effect. Cuncta prius tentanda
might have been formerly urged with some plausibility, but cuncta
prius tentata may now be replied: for surely, if a few monopolizing
fishmongers could defeat that excellent scheme of the Westminster
market, to the erecting which so many justices of peace, as well as
other wise and learned men, did so vehemently apply themselves, that
they might be truly said not only to have laid the whole strength of
their heads, but of their shoulders too, to the business, it would be a
vain endeavor for any other body of men to attempt to remove so stubborn
a nuisance.

If