han _one-half_ of this
sum!

57. This allowance of Mr. ARTHUR YOUNG was made, observe, in 1771, which
was before the Old American War took place. That war made some famous
fortunes for admirals and commodores and contractors and pursers and
generals and commissaries; but, it was not the Americans, the French, nor
the Dutch, that gave the money to make these fortunes. They came out of
_English taxes_; and the heaviest part of those taxes fell upon the
_working people_, who, when they were boasting of "_victories_," and
rejoicing that the "JACK TARS" had got "prize-money," little dreamed that
these victories were purchased by them, and that they paid fifty pounds
for every crown that sailors got in prize-money! In short, this American
war caused a great mass of new taxes to be laid on, and the people of
England became _a great deal poorer than they ever had been before_.
During that war, they BEGAN TO EAT POTATOES, as something to "_save
bread_." The poorest of the people, the very poorest of them, refused, for
a long while, to use them in this way; and even when I was ten years old,
which was just about _fifty years ago_; the poor people would not eat
potatoes, except _with meat_, as they would cabbages, or carrots, or any
other moist vegetable. But, by the end of the American war, their stomachs
had come to! By slow degrees they had been reduced to swallow this
pig-meat, (and bad pig-meat too,) not, indeed, without grumbling; but to
swallow it; to be reduced, thus, many degrees in the scale of animals.

58. At the end of _twenty-four years_ from the date of ARTHUR YOUNG'S
allowance, the poverty and degradation of the English people had made
great strides. We were now in the year 1795, and a new war, and a new
series of "_victories_ and _prizes_" had begun. But who it was that
_suffered_ for these, out of whose blood and flesh and bones they came,
the allowance now (in 1795) made to the poor labourers and their families
will tell. There was, in that year, a TABLE, or SCALE, of allowance,
framed by the Magistrates of Berkshire. This is, by no means, a _hard_
county; and therefore it is reasonable to suppose, that the _scale_ was as
good a one for the poor as any in England. According to this scale, which
was printed and published, and also acted upon for years, the weekly
allowance, for _a man, his wife and three children_, was, according to
present money-prices, 11_s._ 4_d._ Thus it had, in the space of
twenty-four year