Page:Curious catechism.pdf/9

 exceeds all the wisdom of man to tell. But it may be amiss to offer a few hints on this delicate subject.

1. What remedy is there for this sore evil? Many thousand people are starving!

Find them work, and you will find them meat. They will then earn and eat their own bread.

2. But how shall their masters give them work without ruining themselves?

Procure vent for it, and it will not hurt their masters to give them as much work as they can do. And this will be done by sinking the provisions: for then people will have money to buy other things too.

3. But how can the price of wheat be reduced?

By prohibiting, for ever, that bane of health, that destroyer of strength, of life, and of virtue, distilling. Perhaps this alone will answer the whole design. If any thing more be needful, may not all starch be made of rice? and the importation of this, as well as meat, be encouraged?

4. How can the price of oats be reduced?

By reducing the number of horses. And may not this be effectually done, 1. By laying a tax of ten pounds on every horse exported to France; 2- By paying an additional tax on gentlemens carriages; not much for every wheel, (barefaced shameless partity,) but ten pounds yearly for every horse? And these two taxes alone would nearly supply as much as now given for leave to poison his Majesty's liege subjects.

5. How can the price of beef and mutton be reduced?

By increasing the breed of sheep and horned cattle and this would be increased sevenfold, if the price of horses was reduced; which it surely would be half in half, by the method above mentioned.