What could be Done with the Barley. 95 crops would be prejudicially interfered with." But the answers to this objection are conclusive. (1.) Barley might still be in request, whether for malting or not, as food for bullocks; while its fattening powers have been proved upon horses and pigs.* So with apples now used in making cider. The farmers of America, among whom the practice of total abstinence has made most extensive way, have never found any difficulty in profitably disposing of their produce, either on their own farms or in the open market. English farmers, who have conscientiously objected to sell barley for malting, have not been losers by their adherence to principle. A correspondent of the Mark Lane Express communicated the result of an experiment in horse-feeding in these terms: "The keep of the horses upon which the experiment was made had been one bushel of beans, one bushel of oats, and one bushel of bran each per week. The beans and oats were discontinued, and boiled barley supplied instead, of which one bushel was found to suffice. In other respects, the food of the horses was the same as they had been used to, The long and loud outcry in favor of malt as superior to barley for cattle has been scientifically disproved more than once. In two series of experiments, undertaken in the months of October, November, and December, 1845, by order of the Government, it was discovered that the barley-fed bullocks increased 204 lbs., as compared with an increase of 104°5 lbs. in the malt-fed bullock. Experiments upon milch cows also showed, in the words of Professor Thomson, that "barley is superior to malt, weight for weight." In 1865, a new set of experiments were carried out upon twenty milking cows, twenty fattening oxen, sixty sheep, and forty-eight pigs. The barley-fed cows "invariably showed the higher proportion of cream"; the ten oxen fed on barley gave, during twenty weeks, 408 lbs. more increase in live weight than those having an equal amount of the same barley malted. The agricultural mind must now be convinced of this fact, as the Act of Parliament providing for the making of malt free of duty for the feeding of cattle, has become practically repealed by the almost universal neglect of the farmers to take advantage of it. In 1865 the bushels of malt so made were 55,321; in 1871 they were next to nil! So much for the argument once. raised against the malt tax, that cattle would thrive very much more on malt than on barley, and that the tax stood in the way of the better alternative. and they performed the same heavy work upon the road, travelling a weekly average of 140 miles. At the end of five months the animals were as healthy and active as they could possibly have been upon beans and oats, and were in 'high condition.' In a pecuniary point, the saving effected by the change (including the expense of boiling) was full £1 per week." A Cornish farmer has put the case in this practical shape: “When a laboring man spends 52s. a year in beer, the farmer gets but 135. of the sum. He (the writer), wishes the farmer to secure the whole in this way: 12s. for a store pig, and 40s. for barley to feed it on; this quantity (12 bushels) would bring the pig to twenty-score weight, and he asks, Which is the best for a poor family, 200 lbs. of bacon or 39 gallons of beer? He puts it to any laborer, whether 2 lbs. of fresh meat a week would not be more beneficial to him than a pint of beer a day; and the answer is generally favorable to teetotalism."* And well it may be. (2.) It is absurd to suppose that, if the demand for barley should decline, the farmers of the United Kingdom could not adapt their land to the growth of other crops, for which an equally remunerative demand would arise. One plan has been sketched by a practical farmer;† but we should be perfectly safe in leaving their own interests in the hands of the men who, whether as landlords or tenants, have proved, within the last quarter of a century, their capacity for conducting with enterprise and judgment the agricultural operations of the kingdom. Let them but know that there is a great increase of custom for farm produce, and they would belie their well-earned reputation if they did not meet that demand, whatever form it assumed, and make it conducive to their own satisfactory remuneration. It is lamentable to see an agitation kept up, from * "The Farmer's Manual of Teetotalism: A Reply to What will be done with the Barley?" By H. Mudge, Surgeon. Ipswich: Burton. 1841. P. 17. The Farmer's Manual of Teetotalism," p. 19. Temperance the Friend of Agriculture. 97 year to year, to secure the repeal of the malt tax, in the hope that the farmer would be benefited by an increased demand for his barley, when the agitation, if successful, would either increase taxation in other ways or prevent the reduction of taxes pressing on the real comforts of the people; whereas, with the promotion of total abstinence, the true interests of the farming body would be bound up with the sobriety and prosperity of all other classes. The day will come, if wisdom is not to cry aloud in vain, when the lords and tenants of the soil will recognize the folly of relying for any portion of their gains upon the maintenance and increase of habits and a traffic which diminish the purchasing and consuming power of the community, while poor and county rates are raised to an unprecedented and oppressive degree. No illustration could be apter than the present system of "the penny-wise and pound-foolish" method of business to which the far-sighted trader has a reasonable aversion; and if self-interest alone were to guide the counsels of the agriculturists of the land-and in such a connection self-interest (like self-love) and social are the same-it would prompt them to pray and labor for the hastening of the period when a people, having shaken off enervating indulgences and enslaving customs, should call for larger and yet larger supplies of the really Heaven-sent food, satisfying and strengthening, in the providing of which the husbandman would find a quick and sure reward, so that sower and eater would have good reason to rejoice together. The enlightened Fénelon long ago saw that to stop the manufacture of strong drink was not to lessen, but to augment the wealth of the soil; and the eldest son of the late King of the French had arrived, by observation, at the same legitimate conclusion.* All trade, and not least that which is concerned * See Appendix K. in the cultivation of the soil and the satisfaction of man's most imperious wants, must be developed and enriched by the success of a movement which seeks to put the world in repossession of the fundamental virtue of sobriety, and more fully to equip it for that beneficent conquest of nature which Divine Providence has commissioned it to effect. 1 k MICHIGAN University of GENERAL LIBRARY CHAPTER V. PROPOSITION: THAT THE SACRED SCRIPTURES DO NO? AFFORD SANCTION TO THE USE OF INTOXICATING DRINKS It may be confidently asserted, that those who use intoxicating drinks are not led to do so by any supposed sanction to be gathered from Holy Writ; for there are many acts, and courses of action, sanctioned in Scripture which they never think of imitating, and a compliance with which they would regard as irksome or un meaning. They do not drink, in short, because they think that Scripture approves of drink and drinking; but, since they drink at all, they are glad to resort to Scriptural texts for protection against the persuasions of the temperance advocate. Especially is this their refuge wher other refuges have proved too frail; and when hardpressed with the arguments of the abstainer, drawn fron science and experience, some find consolation in the attempt to construct a rampart of texts around the glass of wine, or brandy, or beer which there is no desire to relinquish. This system of defence will generally be found adopted most promptly, and sustained most tenaciously, by persons of religious feeling and profession, whose consciences will not let them be at peace till they have derived, from at least the letter of the Word, a justification of their personal and social habits. Nor is it intended to charge such persons with insincerity, or wilful false-handling of the Sacred Record. It is no new thing for good men of all opinions to seek for, and to discover, in the Bible a support of that which is conge, |