ruel, made of vegetables, quantity not stated, and
one and a half ounces of oatmeal mixed with it.

In the Leicestershire House of Correction, two pounds of bread, and
three pints of gruel; and when at hard labor, one pint of milk in
addition, and twice a week a pint of meat soup at dinner, instead of
gruel.

In the Buxton House of Correction, one and a half pounds of bread, one
and a half pints of gruel, one and a half pints of soup, four-fifths
of a pound of potatos, and two-sevenths of an ounce of beef.

Notwithstanding the preceding daily ration in the Buxton Prison is
about double the usual daily allowance of our slaves, yet the visiting
physicians decided, that for those prisoners who were required to work
the tread-mill, it was _entirely sufficient_. This question was
considered at length, and publicly discussed at the sessions of the
Surry magistrates, with the benefit of medical advice; which resulted
in "large additions" to the rations of those who worked on the
tread-mill. See London Morning Chronicle, Jan. 13, 1830.

To the preceding we add the _ration of the Roman slaves_. The monthly
allowance of food to slaves in Rome was called "Dimensum." The
"Dimensum" was an allowance of wheat or of other grain, which
consisted of five _modii_ a month to each slave. Ainsworth, in his
Latin Dictionary estimates the _modius_, when used for the measurement
of grain, at _a peck and a half_ our measure, which would make the
Roman slave's allowance _two quarts of grain a day_, just double the
allowance provided for the slave by _law_ in North Carolina, and _six_
quarts more per week than the ordinary allowance of slaves in the
slave states generally, as already established by the testimony of
slaveholders themselves. But it must by no means be overlooked that
this "dimensum," or _monthly_ allowance, was far from being the sole
allowance of food to Roman slaves. In _addition_ to this, they had a
stated _daily_ allowance (_diarium_) besides a monthly allowance of
_money_, amounting to about a cent a day.

Now without further trenching on the reader's time, we add, compare
the preceding daily allowances of food to soldiers and sailors in this
and other countries; to convicts in this and other countries; to
bodies of emigrants rationed at public expense; and finally, with the
fixed allowance given to Roman slaves, and we find the states of this
Union, the _slave_ states as well as the free, the United States'
government,