genous wheat contain a larger amount of the outer layers of the grain, and, although 'stronger,' are darker in colour. These flours also pass more readily into violent fermentation, which produces discolouration of the bread, together with heaviness and

wetness.

The cheaper, or, in other words, the inferior, flours are apt to ferment too much, and lose their tenacity, their lightness, and their white colour. In this circumstance we have the key to the use of alum, which is a compound of sulphuric acid with potash and alumina. Good white and porous bread may certainly,' says Mr. Accum, 'be manufactured from good wheaten flour alone, but to produce the degree of whiteness rendered indispensable by the caprice of the consumers in London it is necessary that the dough should be bleached. The smallest quantity of alum that can be employed with effect to produce a white, light, and porous kind of bread, from an inferior kind of flour, is from three to four ounces to a sack of flour, weighing 240 pounds.' The cry against what is called adulteration by alum is thus in substance a cry against converting heavy bread into light breadunpalatable food into palatable. Nevertheless an unsavoury diet is better than a poisonous diet, and the clamour would be reasonable if the charges were true. Nothing, however, could be more unfounded than most of the statements which were put forth, and which Miss Acton has adopted. Dr. Odling, an able investigator, and a man of true science, has so completely exposed them in a paper which he read before the Society of Arts, that it would be superfluous to do more than refer to his refutation. No argument can be drawn from the ordinary effects of alum, inasmuch as it is decomposed in the bread and converted into phosphate of alumina, which is an insoluble substance, and in fact nothing more than so much earth. That it is hurtful in the small quantities in which it is usually employed is very improbable, and certainly it has never yet been proved to be injurious. Lime-water is another efficient agent for improving inferior flours, and has been recommended by Professor Liebig in the proportion of 26 to 27 pints to 100 lbs. of flour. Since there is only 1 lb. of lime in 600 pints of lime-water, the amount introduced is insignificant. It is less, for instance, than exists in the meal of beans, which is also often mixed with damaged flours to restore their bread-making qualities.

Alum probably acts by checking the excessive fermentation which results from the cerealine in the outer coats of the wheat; the cerealine being much more active in bad flour than in good. M. Mège Mouriès has discovered a method by which to neutralise its ill effects, and at the same time obtain much more

bread-meal

bread-meal from the grain than by any process in previous use. In this method only a single grinding and dressing of the wheat is required, by which he obtains from 70 to 74 per cent. of fine flour. The 18 to 20 per cent, of brown meal which remains is stirred up with four times its weight of water, in which sugar and yeast has been submitted to the alcoholic fermentation. The mixture immediately commences its fermentation, which is allowed to continue for six or eight hours. The liquor is then strained for the purpose of removing the bran, and is immediately used to knead the fine flour into dough. This process both separates the meal that was adhering to the bran and prevents the pernicious fermentation that would otherwise have been set up by the cerealine. The result is a loaf 'lighter than that made by the ordinary process, and at a much lower price, in consequence of the greater proportion of the product of the grain being used, and the diminished amount of labour applied both in the milling and the making of the bread. Not only is more of the wheat converted into bread, but a greater quantity of the nitrogenous matters is also retained.

In

As a rule, bread requires a rather quick oven in the baking, or the colour is inferior; but, on the other hand, it is important that the outer part of the dough should not become scorched at first, since the heat will then char the outside while the inside remains uncooked. Dough made too wet requires a rather slow heat. When the inside is not properly baked, the chemical changes go on after the loaf is withdrawn from the oven, and in warm weather the bread soon turns sour and mouldy. keeping, the utmost cleanliness should be practised, or the Fungus, so serviceable to us in the form of Yeast, becomes a pest in the shape of must and mildew. Baked bread undergoes a peculiar change in the course of twenty-four hours after it is cold,becoming, as it is called, stale. This does not arise, as is often supposed, from its drying, for very little water is lost, and the character of new bread may to some extent be restored by heating the loaves gently over again, notwithstanding that this drives off a certain amount of water. The nature of the change has not yet been explained. When loaves have to be kept for several days in damp climates, the reheating them is very advantageous, since it not only improves the condition, but checks the development of mildew. Bread is preserved most advantageously in clean covered pans; but as the crust is apt to become soft by this plan, some prefer to keep it in a safe, placed in a current of air.

The details of the different descriptions of bread-making may be learnt from Miss Acton's useful little book. Those who have

recourse

recourse to it will do well to study her receipts and neglect her denunciations. In these she has been misled by half-informed people, who, taking advantage of the sanitary movement, hoped to advance their own reputation by attacking that of the bakers. There are persons who are said to be afraid to move after studying anatomy for fear of deranging machinery so fearfully and wonderfully made. Those who gave implicit faith to the statements of Miss Acton would, we should conceive, be afraid to eat. No doubt there is a good deal of roguery practised, but the evil is not so great as she represents it. Nor can we doubt that her charges against the bakers of want of cleanliness are much too sweeping. Her accusations, indeed, are hardly compatible with some of her own statements. 'The purity of bread,' she says truly, 'can be preserved (even when it is composed of genuine ingredients) only by the utmost cleanliness in all the details of its preparation, and the absence of every unwholesome influence in the locality where it is effected.' No persons are better acquainted with this fact than bakers themselves, who pay dearly for the neglect of it, knowing by experience that the fermenting agency is not to be trifled with, and that without cleanliness it is impossible to produce a saleable bread. There are, however, some practices in occasional use which it is very desirable should cease. 'I have never,' says Cobbett, 'quite liked baker's bread since I saw a great heavy fellow in a bakehouse, in France, kneading bread with his naked feet. His feet looked very white, to be sure; whether they were of that colour before he got into the trough, I could not tell. God forbid that I should suspect that this is ever done in England!' In England, nevertheless, we have seen it done; and it is hoped that mechanical agencies for kneading bread will soon supersede the use of both feet and hands.

ART. IX.-1. A Letter to Mr. Bright on his plan for turning the English Monarchy into a Democracy. From Henry Drummond. London, 1858.

2. Parliamentary Government considered with reference to a Reform of Parliament. An Essay. By Earl Grey. London,

1858.

W 7ITHOUT any pressure from the public, the leaders of all parties in the House of Commons appear to have acknowledged that the time is come for revising and amending the Reform Act of 1832. The anti-constitutional party of this

country,

gone

country, whose object is not rational and regulated freedom, but democratic ascendancy, have taken advantage of the admission to endeavour to awaken popular passion; and Mr. Bright has from town to town enforcing the most daring extravagance. His success, we are happy to think, has not thus far been commensurate with his ability. He has not succeeded in robbing the British people of their reason; and now that his new scheme of representation is before the public, its inconsistency, its gross partiality, and its contempt of justice, have called forth an almost universal condemnation. His scheme has, at least, one advantage, that it displays the objects of the revolutionary party without reserve. The basis of his representative system is numbers. "The proportion of seats to population is the very soul of Reform.' Yet no sooner has he laid down this doctrine than he flings it over. Ireland, as Mr. Lowe showed in his honest speech at Kidderminster, should, on this theory, have fifty additional members. Mr. Bright gives it five! The English counties should have many more members than at present. Mr. Bright, out of 120 seats which he professes to apportion according to his principle, allots the English counties only eighteen. Even these eighteen are assigned to particular districts, for the avowed reason 'that there have grown up in them very large interests not exclusively connected with land.' In his opinion gentlemen, clergymen, yeomen, and farmers are not so capable of exercising the franchise as shopkeepers, hand-loom weavers, colliers, and ironworkers, and upon this ground, broadly stated by him, he declines to extend to them the same rule which he applies to the inhabitants of towns. He objects to some propositions which have been put forth by rival reformers, that they have been framed 'with the view of finding out modes by which to monopolise representation, instead of conferring it upon the citizens of the kingdom.' The sentence was hardly out of his mouth when he himself developed a plan of which monopoly was the essence. 'The proportion of seats to population, which is the very soul of Reform,' ceases to be its soul the moment he gets beyond the chimneys of Birmingham and Manchester. The fallacies, misstatements, and ignorance displayed in Mr. Bright's speeches, have been so effectually exposed, that to revert to his arguments would be like stabbing the dead body of Hotspur. The project, in which his declamations have resulted is so full of inconsistencies and absurdities, that to pull it to pieces in detail would be waste of time. The principle upon which it proceeds is more worthy of notice, because it is à doctrine which has always been held by revolutionists, and is likely to have a permanence that does not belong to the ephemeral views

and

and reasonings of Mr. Bright. This principle is 'not the proportion of seats to population,' which Mr. Bright only enunciates to abandon. Pernicious and impracticable as is his pretended position, it would be less destructive than the plan to which it is a prelude. His real object is shown alike in the provisions of his bill and his open denial to the counties of their due share in the representation. He wishes to destroy territorial influence, and to give the power to towns. He would have England governed by citizens, and the upper classes by the lower. His ideas are the transcript of those which prevailed in the first French Revolution, and Mr. Burke's description of the views of the Republicans of that day might pass for a description of Mr. Bright's project of Reform: "They are for totally abolishing hereditary name and office, levelling all conditions of men, breaking all connexion between territory and dignity, and abolishing every species of nobility, gentry, and church establishments. Knowing how opposite a permanent landed interest is to that scheme, they have resolved, and it is the great drift of all their regulations, to reduce that description of men to a mere peasantry for the sustenance of towns, and to place the true effective government in cities among the tradesmen, bankers, and clubs of bold, presuming young persons.' Mr. Bright, like these men, would abolish church establishments; he can see no use in a House of Lords, and believes that the public will arrive before long at the same conclusion; and it is the corolIary, the necessary consequence of these doctrines, that he should desire to reduce the landed interest to a cipher, and get the government into the hands of cotton-spinners and mechanics. All who hate the nobility, gentry, and clergy—all who believe that property would be more secure, society more enlightened, religion more respected, liberality more extensive, if these orders of the community were supplanted by the multitudes of Manchester and Birmingham-will be consistent in cheering on Mr. Bright. Those who do not desire that everything which has been respected and venerated for ages should be swept away, and that the whole order of things should be turned upside down-the first put last, and the last first-will as certainly repudiate his revolutionary project. The scheme was tried in France, and all the world knows with what result. The measure of justice which would be dealt out to the conquered interests may be judged from the present demands of Mr. Bright. The daring defiance of all fairness in his treatment of the counties before he is triumphant, may be taken as an indication of what his dealings would be when success had crowned his efforts. He even violates his own principle of Reform the moment the landed interest is to have the benefit of it, and declares the counties undeserving of Vol. 105.-No. 209. the

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