there is much more meat of a superior quality brought to market
at present than ever there was. When the price of butchers' meat
was very low, cattle were reared chiefly upon waste lands; and
except for some of the principal markets, were probably killed
with but little other fatting. The veal that is sold so cheap in
some distant counties at present bears little other resemblance
than the name, to that which is bought in London. Formerly, the
price of butchers, meat would not pay for rearing, and scarcely
for feeding, cattle on land that would answer in tillage; but the
present price will not only pay for fatting cattle on the very
best land, but will even allow of the rearing many, on land that
would bear good crops of corn. The same number of cattle, or even
the same weight of cattle at the different periods when killed,
will have consumed (if I may be allowed the expression) very
different quantities of human substance. A fatted beast may in
some respects be considered, in the language of the French
economists,36 as an unproductive labourer: he has added nothing
to the value of the raw produce that he has consumed. The present
system of grating, undoubtedly tends more than the former system
to diminish the quantity of human subsistence in the country, in
proportion to the general fertility of the land.

I would not by any means be understood to say that the former
system either could or ought to have continued. The increasing
price of butchers' meat is a natural and inevitable consequence
of the general progress of cultivation; but I cannot help
thinking, that the present great demand for butchers' meat of the
best quality, and the quantity of good land that is in
consequence annually employed to produce it, together with the
great number of horses at present kept for pleasure, are the