“And now for the vermin destroyed by Messrs. Shaw and Sabin--34,000
yearly! Taken at the same calculation, with their three years’
progeny--can you believe it?--they would consume more food than the
whole population of the earth? Yes, if Omnipotence would raise up
29,573,600 more people, these rats would consume as much food as them
all! You may wonder, but I will prove it to you:--The population of
the earth, including men, women, and children, is estimated to be
970,000,000 souls; and the 17,000 rats in three years would produce
10,995,736,000: consequently, at ten rats per man, there would be
sufficient rats to eat as much food as all the people on the earth,
and leaving 1,295,736,000. So that if the human family were increased
to 1,099,573,600, instead of 970,000,000, there would be rats enough
to eat the food of them all! Now, sirs, is not this a most appalling
thing, to think that there are at the present time in the British
Empire thousands--nay, millions--of human beings in a state of utter
starvation, while rats are consuming that which would place them and
their families in a state of affluence and comfort? I ask this simple
question: Has not Parliament, ere now, been summoned upon matters of
far less importance to the empire? I think it has.”
The author then advocates the repeal of the “rat-tax,” that is, the
tax on what he calls the “true friend of man and remorseless destroyer
of rats,” the well-bred terrier dog. “Take the tax off rat-killing
dogs” he says, “and give a legality to rat-killing, and let there be in
each parish a man who will pay a reward per head for dead rats, which
are valuable for manure (as was done in the case of wolves in the old
days), and then rats would be extinguished for ever!” Uncle James seems
to be a perfect Malthus among rats. The over-population and over-rat
theories are about equal in reason.
[Illustration: THE RAT-CATCHERS OF THE SEWERS.
[_From a Daguerreotype by_ BEARD.]]