by meals of salt beef, bacon, anchovies, sardines, red herrings,
shrimps, olives, pea-soup, and that description of diet; and when
they screech for drink, in accents that might melt a heart of stone,
which they do constantly (I allude to screeching, not to melting),
this liquid is introduced into their too confiding stomachs. At
such an early age, and to so great an extent, is this custom of
provoking thirst, then quenching it with a stunting drink, observed,
that brine pap has already superseded the use of tops-and-bottoms;
and wet-nurses, previously free from any kind of reproach, have been
seen to stagger in the streets: owing, sir, to the quantity of gin
introduced into their systems, with a view to its gradual and
natural conversion into the fluid I have already mentioned.

Upon the best calculation I can make, this is going on, as I have
said, in the proportion of about two families and a fraction in
four. In one more family and a fraction out of the same number,
efforts are being made to reduce the children to a state of nature;
and to inculcate, at a tender age, the love of raw flesh, train oil,
new rum, and the acquisition of scalps. Wild and outlandish dances
are also in vogue (you will have observed the prevailing rage for
the Polka); and savage cries and whoops are much indulged in (as you
may discover, if you doubt it, in the House of Commons any night).
Nay, some persons, Mr. Hood; and persons of some figure and
distinction too; have already succeeded in breeding wild sons; who
have been publicly shown in the Courts of Bankruptcy, and in police-
offices, and in other commodious exhibition-rooms, with great
effect, but who have not yet found favour at court; in consequence,
as I infer, of the impression made by Mr. Rankin's wild men being
too fresh and recent, to say nothing of Mr. Rankin's wild men being
foreigners.