Page:Thoughts on the Corn laws, addressed to the working classes of the county of Gloucester.djvu/22

18 to himself all that is more than sufficient to give his tenant the ordinary profits of his business.

There does not appear to be any considerable difference in the expense of raising a certain amount of agricultural produce now and a century or two ago. The gradual improvements in the system of husbandry having a constant tendency to make agricultural produce cheaper; and the farmer being obliged to have recourse to inferior land, or to pay a higher rent, having a constant tendency to make agricultural produce dearer; probably these two causes about counterbalance one another. But, be this as it may, unless the supply of food can increase faster than the population, the increase of food will give no increased abundance to the labourer. An increase in the supply of food will eventually increase the numbers of the population, and a reduction in the supply of food will diminish the numbers of the population. While the increase is going on, the labourer will enjoy a temporary abundance; while the diminution is going on, the labourer will suffer a temporary distress. But as soon as the population has accommodated itself to the supply of food, the only effect will be an alteration in the numbers of the people that have to subsist upon it.

But an increase in the artificial comforts of life may go on for ever, without producing any augmentation of the number of persons among whom they are distributed.