Page:Observations on the effects of the corn laws - Malthus -1814.djvu/29

 fits and a rent at least equal to the rent of the land in its former state, no sufficient motive can exist to undertake the projected improvement.

It was a fatal mistake in the system of the economists to consider merely production and reproduction, and not the provision for an increasing population, to which their territorial tax would have raised the most formidable obstacles.

On the whole then considering the present accumulation of manufacturing population in this country, compared with any other in Europe, the expenses attending enclosures, the price of labour and the weight of taxes, few things seem less probable, than that Great Britain should naturally grow an independent supply of corn; and nothing can be more certain, than that if the prices of wheat in Great Britain were reduced by free importation nearly to a level with those of America and the continent, and if our manufacturing prosperity were to continue increasing, it would incontestably answer to us to support a part of our present population on foreign corn, and nearly the whole probably of the increasing population, which we may naturally expect to take place in the course of the next twenty or twenty-five years.

The next question for consideration is, whether an independent supply, if it do not come natu-