Page:The Economic Journal Volume 1.djvu/504

482 of it. As the point is of some interest, it may be worth while quoting at length the parallel passages in the earlier and later versions. In all the editions, the paragraph in which the passages occur begins as follows:—

Then comes, in the first edition, the following passage:—

In some countries of Europe, and many of Asia, as well as in the islands in the South Seas, the people are miserable, either from a vicious government or from habits of indolence, which make them prefer present ease and inactivity, though without security against want, to a moderate degree of exertion, with plenty of food and necessaries. By diminishing their population, no relief would be afforded, for production would diminish in as great or even in a greater proportion.. The remedy for the evils under which Poland and Ireland suffer, which are similar to those experienced in the South Seas, is to stimulate exertion, to create new wants and to implant new tastes, for these countries must accumulate a much larger amount of capital, before the diminished rate of production will render the progress of capital necessarily less rapid than the progress of population. The facility with which the wants of the Irish are supplied, permits that people to pass a great part of their time in idleness: if the population were diminished, the evil would increase, because wages would rise, and therefore the labourer would be enabled, in exchange for a still less portion of his labour, to obtain all that his moderate wants require.

Give to the Irish labourer a taste for the comforts and enjoyments which habit has made essential to the English labourer, and he would be then content to devote a further portion of his time to