In many places a full
fourth of the sheep or the lambs were lost; what remained of the lambs
were poor and ill fed, the ewes having had no milk. The calves came
late, and they were generally an article the want of which was as much
to be dreaded as any other. So that article of food, formerly so
abundant in the early part of the summer, particularly in London, and
which in a great part supplied the place of mutton for near two months,
did little less than totally fail.
All the productions of the earth link in with each other. All the
sources of plenty, in all and every article, were dried or frozen up.
The scarcity was not, as gentlemen seem to suppose, in wheat only.
Another cause, and that not of inconsiderable operation, tended to
produce a scarcity in flesh provision. It is one that on many accounts
cannot be too much regretted, and the rather, as it was the sole _cause_
of a scarcity in that article which arose from the proceedings of men
themselves: I mean the stop put to the distillery.
The hogs (and that would be sufficient) which were fed with the waste
wash of that produce did not demand the fourth part of the corn used by
farmers in fattening them. The spirit was nearly so much clear gain to
the nation. It is an odd way of making flesh cheap, to stop or check the
distillery.
The distillery in itself produces an immense article of trade almost all
over the world,--to Africa, to North America, and to various parts of
Europe.
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