powerfully condemned the use of flesh, and he humorously attributes the
proverbial boorishness of Englishmen to their fondness for roast beef!

And now let us look a little to facts: in all ages of the world those
have ever been the most savage nations which observed an animal diet.
Thus the Tartars, the Ethiopians, the Scythians, and the Arabians, who
live wholly on animal food, possess that ferocity of mind and fierceness
of character, common to carnivorous animals, while the vegetable diet of
the Brahmins and Hindoos gives to their character a gentleness and
mildness directly the reverse; potatoes, chestnuts, &c. satisfy the
wants of the Alpine peasant, and there are numerous, harmless tribes,
who feed solely on vegetables and water. Even Homer in his time has made
the Cyclops, who were flesh eaters, horrid monsters of men, and the
Lotophagi, he has described as a people so amiable, that when strangers
had once become acquainted with them, and tasted the fruits on which
they lived, they even forgot their native country to take up their abode
with their hosts. But in those civilized countries where animal food is
commonly eaten, it must follow that the lower orders, who compose the
great majority of the population, cannot partake of it in any great
quantities; now it does not appear that the rich enjoy better health
from this luxurious mode of living, or that the poor are less healthy
from the want of it; on the contrary, the wealthier classes are subject
to many chronic and other disorders arising from their aliment, and they
have a very large body of physicians, who subsist by a constant
attendance on them, while on the other hand, those in the lower walks of
life are seldom out of health, owing to their more simple and less
injurious mode of living; they suffer only from accident and natural
disease, and, generally speaking, when they are attacked, it proves
their first and last illness. Moreover, as the poor are more at ease
while they live, so too experience shows that they live longer; cases of