Page:Manual of Political Economy.djvu/133

84 Since, therefore, we are to a much greater extent restricted to our own soil for meat and dairy produce, importation has not been able to counteract that rise in the price of these articles, which according to political economy must accompany the increased consumption of a more numerous and better paid labouring class; the result has been that meat and dairy produce have become fifty or sixty per cent, more expensive within the last thirty or forty years. In all probability the labouring population will for many years continue to increase; every year therefore a greater quantity of food will be consumed in this country; the mode in which this increased supply of food will be obtained must mainly determine what will be the future condition of our labouring population. If the opening of new sources of foreign supply and the introduction of agricultural improvements should enable an increased quantity of food to be procured without any advance in its value, then a larger population may be maintained in an improved material condition. If on the other hand foreign importations and agricultural improvements should not exert a sufficiently powerful influence to check a rise in the value of food, as the demand for it increases, (or, in other words, if resort must be had to less productive soils in order to supply the wants of an increasing population), then the condition of the labouring population will gradually but steadily deteriorate.