are richer, and, in each place, it
rose as high as the people were found able to pay.
-=-

When the necessaries of life become dear, and arrive at a monopoly-
price, then all taxes and other burthens laid on the people become a
matter comparatively of little importance. In England, where the taxes
are higher than in any nation in the world, they do not come on the
poor to above three pounds a head; {127} and, of those, at least one-
half can be avoided by a little self-denial. But, when the provisions
increase one-half in price, it amounts to at least four pounds a head to
each person; so that the effect falls on the population of the country,
with a most extraordinary degree of severity.

But, great as this evil is, it has, by the circumstances and nature of
things, a tendency to increase the very cause in which it originates.
Though the highness of price diminishes the consumption of victuals
in general, it diminishes the consumption of vegetable food, or bread,
more than it does that of animal food. Though all sorts of eatables rise
in price, in times of scarcity, yet bread, being the article that excites
the greatest anxiety, rises higher in proportion than the others. This
affords an encouragement to gratify the propensity for eating animal
food; and this propensity is encouraged by an absurd and mistaken
policy, by which (or perhaps rather an affectation of policy) economy
in bread is prescribed, and not in other food; so that when people
devour animal food, and increase the evil, they think they are most
patriotically and humanely diminishing it. {128}

---
{127} The whole taxes in this country do not amount to above four
pounds a head, of which one-third is paid entirely by those wealthy, or
at least affluent; it is, then, putting the share paid by the labouring
body very high to put it at three pounds each person.

{128} Both in France and England, during the last scarcity, the use of
every other sort of [end of page #151] food was recommended, to save
the consumption of bread-corn. Potatoes are the only substitute that
tended really to relieve the distress; all others, and, in particular,
animal food, had an effect in augmenting it.
-=-

The danger of wanting food, though very formidable, does not act so
instantaneously as to serve as an excuse for want of reflection, like an
alarm of fire, where the anxiety to escape sometimes prevents the
possibility of doing so; yet the fact is, that all the measures