Page:Thoughts on the Corn laws, addressed to the working classes of the county of Gloucester.djvu/18

14 sixpence saved may be considered as so much added to the income of the labourer.

The amount of food in a country may be said to limit the population supported by it; while the amount of articles of convenience, not necessary to the support of life, measures the comforts to be divided among that population. Thus we hear of people in one country rearing families under circumstances of discomfort and misery that are not to be found in another: a fact that has been accounted for by some writers by supposing that the inhabitants of one country had a superior "taste for the comforts of life." The real reason appears to be, that the power of rearing a family depends upon the command that a man has over food, and the absolute