nor riches; feed me with food convenient for me: lest I be full and deny
thee; or lest I be poor and steal."

19. A _good living_ therefore, a _competence_, is the first thing to be
desired and to be sought after; and, if this little work should have the
effect of aiding only a small portion of the Labouring Classes in securing
that competence, it will afford great gratification to their friend

WM. COBBETT.

_Kensington, 19th July, 1821._

BREWING BEER.

20. Before I proceed to give any directions about brewing, let me mention
some of the inducements to do the thing. In former times, to set about to
show to Englishmen that it was good for them to brew beer in their houses
would have been as impertinent as gravely to insist, that they ought to
endeavour not to lose their breath; for, in those times, (only forty years
ago,) to have a _house_ and not to brew was a rare thing indeed. Mr.
ELLMAN, an old man and a large farmer, in Sussex, has recently given in
evidence, before a Committee of the House of Commons, this fact; that,
_forty years ago_, there was not a labourer in his parish that did not
_brew his own beer_; and that _now_ there is _not one that does it_,
except by chance the malt be given him. The causes of this change have
been the lowering of the wages of labour, compared with the price of
provisions, by the means of the paper-money; the enormous tax upon the
barley when made into _malt_; and the increased tax upon _hops_. These
have quite changed the customs of the English people as to their drink.
They still drink _beer_, but, in general, it is of the brewing of _common
brewers_, and in public-houses, of which the common brewers have become
the owners, and have thus, by the aid of paper-money, obtained a
_monopoly_ in the supplying of the great body of the people with one of
those things which, to the hard-working man, is almost a necessary of
life.

21. These things will be altered. They must be altered. The nation must be
sunk into nothingness, or a new system must be adopted; and the nation
will not sink into nothingness. The malt now pays a tax of 4_s._ 6_d._[1]
a bushel, and the barley costs only 3_s._ This brings the bushel of malt
to 8_s._ including the maltster's charge for malting. If the tax were
taken off the malt, malt would be sold, at the present price of barley,
for about 3_s._ 3_d._ a bushel; because a bushel of barley makes more than
a bushel of malt, and the tax, besides its amoun