ness, a debaucher of youth, and a maker
of misery for old age. In the fifteen bushels of malt there are 570 pounds
weight of _sweet_; that is to say, of nutricious matter, unmixed with any
thing injurious to health. In the 730 tea messes of the year there are 54
pounds of sweet in the sugar, and about 30 pounds of matter equal to sugar
in the milk. Here are 84 pounds instead of 570, and even the good effect
of these 84 pounds is more than over-balanced by the corrosive, gnawing
and poisonous powers of the tea.

30. It is impossible for any one to deny the truth of this statement. Put
it to the test with a lean hog: give him the fifteen bushels of malt, and
he will repay you in ten score of bacon or thereabouts. But give him the
730 tea messes, or rather begin to give them to him, and give him nothing
else, and he is dead with hunger, and bequeaths you his skeleton, at the
end of about seven days. It is impossible to doubt in such a case. The tea
drinking has done a great deal in bringing this nation into the state of
misery in which it now is; and the tea drinking, which is carried on by
"dribs" and "drabs;" by pence and farthings going out at a time; this
miserable practice has been gradually introduced by the growing weight of
the taxes on malt and on hops, and by the everlasting penury amongst the
labourers, occasioned by the paper-money.

31. We see better prospects however, and therefore let us now rouse
ourselves, and shake from us the degrading curse, the effects of which
have been much more extensive and infinitely more mischievous than men in
general seem to imagine.

32. It must be evident to every one, that the practice of tea drinking
must render the frame feeble and unfit to encounter hard labour or severe
weather, while, as I have shown, it deducts from the means of replenishing
the belly and covering the back. Hence succeeds a softness, an
effeminacy, a seeking for the fire-side, a lurking in the bed, and, in
short, all the characteristics of idleness, for which, in this case, real
want of strength furnishes an apology. The tea drinking fills the
public-house, makes the frequenting of it habitual, corrupts boys as soon
as they are able to move from home, and does little less for the girls, to
whom the gossip of the tea-table is no bad preparatory school for the
brothel. At the very least, it teaches them idleness. The everlasting
dawdling about with the slops of the tea tackle, gives them a relish for
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