.

I have dwelt at such length on the physiological and medical arguments
in defence of the vegetable system, that I must compress my remaining
views into the smallest space possible; especially those which relate to
its political, national, or general advantages.

Political economists tell us that the produce of an acre of land in
wheat, corn, potatoes, and other vegetables, and in fruits, will sustain
animal life sixteen times as long as when the produce of the same acre
is converted into flesh, by feeding and fattening animals upon it.

But, if we admit that this estimate is too high, and if the real
difference is only eight to one, instead of sixteen to one, the results
may perhaps surprise us; and if we have not done it before, may lead us
to reflection. Let us see what some of them are.

The people of the United States are believed to eat, upon the average,
an amount of animal food equal at least to one whole meal once a day,
and those of Great Britain one in two days. But taking this estimate to
be correct, Great Britain, by substituting vegetable for animal food,
might sustain forty-nine instead of twenty-one millions of inhabitants,
and the United States sixty-six millions instead of twenty; and this,
too, in their present comfort, and without clearing up any more new
land. Here, then, we are consuming that unnecessarily--if animal food is
unnecessary--which would sustain seventy-nine millions of human beings
in life, health, and happiness.

Now, if life is a blessing at all--if it is a blessing to twenty-two
millions in Great Britain, and twenty millions in the United
States--then to add to this population an increase of seventy-nine
millions, would be to increase, in the same proportion, the aggregate of
human happiness. And if, in addition to this, we admit the very
generally received principle, that there is a tendency, from the nature
of things, in the population of any country, to keep up with the means
of support, we, of Great Britain and America, keep down, at the present
moment, by flesh-eating, sixty-three millions of inhabitants.

We do not destroy them, in the full sense of the term, it is true, for
they never had an existence. But we prevent their coming into the
possession of a joyous and happy existence; and though we have no name
for it, is it not a crime? What! no crime for thirty-five millions of
people to prevent and preclude the existence of sixty-three millions?

I see no way of avoi