Do you ever wake up in the morning thinking of Pigsmeat Spence. Yes, this happened to me again this morning, so I thought it must be time to unburden myself.
Pigsmeat was about five feet tall. He was born in 1750 and died in 1814. He was one of nineteen children and spent a lot of time in jail. He once got in a fight with a political opponent and was beat up with a quarterstaff. (This is the English hardwood fighting stick Little John used in the Robin Hood story.) He married, but his wife, preacher and publisher all died before Pigsmeat reached the age of 45, so he lived the last part of his life alone. He was usually penniless. He made some money teaching and selling tracts about politics and coining money. He had a son who helped him some in his businesses and married a young pretty servant girl as his second wife, but she deserted him.
I have a warm spot for Pigsmeat: he could see the problems, but couldn't really figure out a good way to fix them, so he came up with a series of plans that confused his followers. He was responding to the enclosures that were forcing people off the land and causing starvation. He was thought to favor the nationalization of land, but he didn't trust the government believing the rich would use political power to take advantage of such a system. He also advocated land owned by parishes for the benefit of people in the parish. Critics complain his various plans were inconsistent and half-baked. I see him, then, as a searcher after truth who says what he believes and then when he figures out it won't work says something else.
Pigsmeat's real name was Thomas. He got the apodo of Pigsmeat after his publication, "Pig's Meat or Lessons for the Swinish Multitude." Numismatists still value the tokens he minted to celebrate his magazine.
He took the name in response to an Edmund Burke quotation in response to the French Revolution, "Learning will be cast into the mire and trodden down under the hoofs of a swinish multitude."
The aristocracy was afraid the French and their revolutionary ideas were on the way. Pigsmeat was especially peaved that the a local Duke hoarded the bounty of the land when people were hungry. He says this:
What must I say to the French if they come? If they jeeringly ask me what I am fighting for? Must I tell them, "for my country"? My dear country in which I dare not pluck a nut? Would they not laugh at me? If the French came I would throw down my musket, saying: "Let such as the Duke of Portland, who claims the country, fight for it."
No wonder he kept getting in trouble.
Now why has Pigsmeat been bubbling up in my dreams? The food riots, probably. Pigsmeat Spence was formed by food riots. His favorite preacher, addressed them in sermons. (Where are these kinds of preachers now that we need them?)
Food riots in Malhalla, Egypt. Food riots in Haiti where there has been a sharp increase in the sale of "dirt cookies," (cookies of mud with salt and shortening). Also in Burkina Faso, Cameroon, Ivory Coast, Maurtania, Senegal and Bangladesh. Three billion people survive on less than $2 per day. In 2007 the price of grain rose by 42 percent and dairy products by 80 percent. In the last twelve months alone what prices have increased by 130 percent, and rice by 74 percent.
In the United States food inflation is the highest in decades. An unprecedented 28 million Americans are expected to receive food stamps to survive this year.
Today's Washington Post in an article by Colum Lynch says, "The United Nations is already struggling to avert a famine in Somalia and is feeding more than 2.7 million. 'What is of major concern is the thought that the entire emergency food system may not be able to cope,' according to an internal U.N. paper."
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