than two years have now
elapsed; _not one of them has died_; no such example will be found in
any sixty persons taken at random.

"When these proofs come fairly before the world, and are clearly seen by
all who understand arithmetic, it is scarcely possible that abstinence
from aliments demonstrably pernicious should not become universal.

"In proportion to the number of proselytes, so will be the weight of
evidence; and when a thousand persons can be produced, living on
vegetables and distilled water, who have to dread no disease but old
age, the world will be compelled to regard animal flesh and fermented
liquors as slow but certain poisons.

"The change which would be produced by simple habits on political
economy, is sufficiently remarkable. The monopolizing eater of animal
flesh would no longer destroy his constitution by devouring an acre at a
meal, and many loaves of bread would cease to contribute to gout,
madness, and apoplexy, in the shape of a pint of porter, or a dram of
gin, when appeasing the long-protracted famine of the hard-working
peasant's hungry babes.

"The quantity of nutritious vegetable matter, consumed in fattening the
carcass of an ox, would afford ten times the sustenance, undepraving
indeed, and incapable of generating disease, if gathered immediately
from the bosom of the earth. The most fertile districts of the habitable
globe are now actually cultivated by men for animals, at a delay and
waste of aliment absolutely incapable of calculation. It is only the
wealthy that can, to any great degree, even now, indulge the unnatural
craving for dead flesh, and they pay for the greater license of the
privilege, by subjection to supernumerary diseases.

"Again--the spirit of the nation that should take the lead in this great
reform would insensibly become agricultural; commerce, with its vices,
selfishness, and corruption, would gradually decline; more natural
habits would produce gentler manners, and the excessive complication of
political relations would be so far simplified that every individual
might feel and understand why he loved his country, and took a personal
interest in its welfare.

"On a natural system of diet, we should require no spices from India; no
wines from Portugal, Spain, France, or Madeira; none of those
multitudinous articles of luxury, for which every corner of the globe is
rifled, and which are the cause of so much individual rivalship, and
such calamitous and sangui