and Libel Laws, a human
being in this country scarcely knows what he dares do or what he dares
say. What father, for instance, would have imagined, that, having brewing
utensils, which two men carry from house to house as easily as they can a
basket, _he dared not lend them to his son, living in the next street, or
at the next door_? Yet such really is the law; for, according to the Act
5th of the 22 and 23 of that honest and sincere gentleman Charles II.,
there is a penalty of 50_l._ for lending or letting brewing utensils.
However, it has this limit; that the penalty is confined to _Cities_,
_Corporate Towns_, and _Market Towns_, WHERE THERE IS A PUBLIC BREWHOUSE.
So that, in the first place, you may let, or lend, in _any_ place where
there is _no public brewhouse_; and in all towns not _corporate or
market_, and in all villages, hamlets, and scattered places.

109. Another thing is, can a man who has brewed beer at his own house in
the country, bring that beer into town to his own house, and for the use
of his family there? This has been asked of me. I cannot give a positive
answer without reading about _seven large volumes in quarto of taxing
laws_. The best way would be to _try it_; and, if any penalty, pay it by
_subscription_, if that would not come under the law of _conspiracy_!
However, I _think_, there can be no danger here. So monstrous a thing as
this can, surely, not exist. If there be such a law, it is daily violated;
for nothing is more common than for country gentlemen, who have a dislike
to die by poison, bringing their home-brewed beer to London.

110. Another correspondent recommends _parishes to make their own malt_.
But, surely, the landlords mean to get rid of the _malt and salt tax_!
Many dairies, I dare say, pay 50_l._ a year each in salt tax. How, then,
are they to contend against Irish butter and Dutch butter and cheese? And
as to the malt tax, it is a dreadful drain from the land. I have heard of
labourers, living "in _unkent places_," making their _own malt_, even now!
Nothing is so easy as to make your own malt, if you were permitted. You
soak the barley about three days (according to the state of the weather.)
and then you put it upon stones or bricks _and keep it turned_, till the
root _shoots out_; and then to know when to _stop_, and to put it to dry,
take up a corn (which you will find nearly transparent) and look through
the skin of it. You will see the _spear_, that is to say, the sho