19. A _good living_ therefore, a _competence_, is the first thing to be desired and to be sought after; and, if this little work should have the effect of aiding only a small portion of the Labouring Classes in securing that competence, it will afford great gratification to their friend
20. Before I proceed to give any directions about brewing, let me mention some of the inducements to do the thing. In former times, to set about to show to Englishmen that it was good for them to brew beer in their houses would have been as impertinent as gravely to insist, that they ought to endeavour not to lose their breath; for, in those times, (only forty years ago,) to have a _house_ and not to brew was a rare thing indeed. Mr. ELLMAN, an old man and a large farmer, in Sussex, has recently given in evidence, before a Committee of the House of Commons, this fact; that, _forty years ago_, there was not a labourer in his parish that did not _brew his own beer_; and that _now_ there is _not one that does it_, except by chance the malt be given him. The causes of this change have been the lowering of the wages of labour, compared with the price of provisions, by the means of the paper-money; the enormous tax upon the barley when made into _malt_; and the increased tax upon _hops_. These have quite changed the customs of the English people as to their drink. They still drink _beer_, but, in general, it is of the brewing of _common brewers_, and in public-houses, of which the common brewers have become the owners, and have thus, by the aid of paper-money, obtained a _monopoly_ in the supplying of the great body of the people with one of those things which, to the hard-working man, is almost a necessary of life.
21. These things will be altered. They must be altered. The nation must be sunk into nothingness, or a new system must be adopted; and the nation will not sink into nothingness. The malt now pays a tax of 4_s._ 6_d._[1] a bushel, and the barley costs only 3_s._ This brings the bushel of malt to 8_s._ including the maltster's charge for malting. If the tax were taken off the malt, malt would be sold, at the present price of barley, for about 3_s._ 3_d._ a bushel; because a bushel of barley makes more than a bushel of malt, and the tax, besides its amount, causes great expenses of various sorts to the maltster. The hops pay a tax of 2_d._[2] a pound; and a bushel of malt requires, in general, a pound of hops; if these two taxes were taken off, therefore, the consumption of barley and of hops would be exceedingly increased; for double the present quantity would be demanded, and the land is always ready to send it forth.