which this false, this flashy, this
flimsy, this rotten system will dissolve as one of his father's pasted
calicoes does at the sight of the washing-tub.

153. "What," says the cottager, "has all this to do with hogs and bacon?"
Not directly with hogs and bacon, indeed; but it has a great deal to do,
my good fellow with your affairs, as I shall, probably, hereafter more
fully show, though I shall now leave you to the enjoyment of your flitches
of bacon, which, as I before observed, will do ten thousand times more
than any Methodist parson, or any other parson (except, of course, those
of _our_ church) to make you happy, not only in this world, but in the
world to come. _Meat in the house_ is a great source of _harmony_, a great
preventer of the temptation to commit those things, which, from small
beginnings, lead, finally, to the most fatal and atrocious results; and I
hold that doctrine to be _truly damnable_, which teaches that God has made
any selection, any condition relative to belief, which is to save from
punishment those who violate the principles of _natural justice_.

154. _Some_ other meat you may have; but, bacon is the great thing. It is
always ready; as good cold as hot; goes to the field or the coppice
conveniently; in harvest, and other busy times, demands the pot to be
boiled only on a Sunday; has twice as much strength in it as any other
thing of the same weight; and in short, has in it every quality that tends
to make a labourer's family able to work and well off. One pound of bacon,
such as that which I have described, is, in a labourer's family, worth
four or five of ordinary mutton or beef, which are great part _bone_, and
which, in short, are gone in a moment. But always observe, it is _fat
bacon_ that I am talking about. There will, in spite of all that can be
done, be _some_ lean in the gammons, though comparatively very little; and
therefore you ought to begin at that end of the flitches; for, _old lean
bacon_ is not good.

155. Now, as to the _cost_. A pig (a _spayed sow_ is best) bought in March
four months old, can be had now for fifteen shillings. The cost till
fatting time is next to nothing to a Cottager; and then the cost, at the
present price of corn, would, for a hog of twelve score, not exceed _three
pounds_; in the whole _four pounds five_; a pot of poison a week bought at
the public-house comes to _twenty-six shillings_ of the money; and more
than _three times the remainder_ is gen