Page:Principles of Political Economy Vol 1.djvu/634

612 But if there were not these causes, there is cause almost sufficient in the very fact of an increased and rapidly increasing population. Paris has added, in fourteen years, between four and five hundred thousand to its inhabitants, an increase of nearly one-half. The agriculture of a country must be rapidly improving indeed, if an increase like this can take place in a single market without compelling it to draw its supplies from a larger surface and a greater distance, and therefore at an increased expense. Where would London have been by this time, for the supply of its markets, were it not for our great coasting trade, and the invention of steam communication, which conveys not only cattle but carcases from the extremity of Scotland as cheaply as they could formerly be brought from Buckinghamshire? The cattle for the supply of Paris must travel by land, from distances varying from 50 to 150 leagues (this rests on the authority of a Committee of the Municipal Council of Paris in 1841), and after so long a journey have either to be brought to market out of condition, or to be fattened in the immediate neighbourhood. Can any one, then, be surprised that a double population cannot be so cheaply supplied as one of half the number?

To these causes of the diminished supply of butcher's meat in the towns, we are not afraid to add another, which, though resting mainly on general considerations, we should not be wholly unable to support by positive evidence. This is, the increased