_L._ _s._ _d._

18lb. of tea 4 10 0
54lb. of sugar 1 11 6
365 pints of milk 1 10 0
Tea tackle 0 5 0
200 fires 0 16 8
30 days' work 0 15 0
Loss by going to public-house 1 19 0
------------
_L._ 11 7 2[3]

25. I have here estimated every thing at its very lowest. The
entertainment which I have here provided is as poor, as mean, as miserable
as any thing short of starvation can set forth; and yet the wretched thing
amounts to a good third part of a good and able labourer's wages! For this
money, he and his family may drink good and wholesome beer; in a short
time, out of the mere savings from this waste, may drink it out of silver
cups and tankards. In a labourer's family, _wholesome_ beer, that has a
little life in it, is all that is wanted in _general_. Little children,
that do not work, should not have beer. Broth, porridge, or something in
that way, is the thing for them. However, I shall suppose, in order to
make my comparison as little complicated as possible, that he brews
nothing but beer as strong as the generality of beer to be had at the
public-house, and divested of the poisonous drugs which that beer but too
often contains; and I shall further suppose that he uses in his family two
quarts of this beer every day from the first of October to the last day of
March inclusive: three quarts a day during the months of April and May;
four quarts a day during the months of June and September; and five quarts
a day during the months of July and August; and if this be not enough, it
must be a family of drunkards. Here are 1097 quarts, or 274 gallons. Now,
a bushel of malt will make eighteen gallons of better beer than that which
is sold at the public-houses. And this is precisely a gallon for the price
of a quart. People should bear in mind, that the beer bought at the
public-house is loaded with a _beer tax_, with the tax on the public-house
keeper, in the shape of license, with all the taxes and expenses of the
brewer, with all the taxes, rent, and other expenses of the publican, and
with all the _profits_ of both brewer and publican; so that when a man
swallows a pot of beer at a public-house, he has all these expenses to
help to defray, besides the m