Page:Henry Stephens Salt - A Plea for Vegetarianism and Other Essays.pdf/70

Rh beans, lentils, wholemeal bread, or oatmeal. Mr. Hoyle has calculated that, if every family in the kingdom were to reduce its consumption of butcher's meat by one pound’s weight only, there would be an annual saving of at least ten millions of money. Statistics are proverbially an unsatisfactory method of argument ; but, even at the lowest computation, it cannot be denied that our food supply would be enormously increased if the use of ﬂesh meat were entirely discontinued. Nor would this direct saving be by any means the only benefit resulting from the change. If the towns renounced ﬂesh eating. it would no longer be worth a landlord’s while to keep arable land in pasture, and the result would be an immense development of