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corn only in countries where land is cheap, in 

 countries where the proportion which land bears to 

 people is so great as, first, to render unnecessary the 

 cultivation of inferior land, and secondly, to encou- 

 rage a large portion of the people to occupy them- 

 selves with the growth of corn. Poland is such a 

 country ; as was England when the bulk of English- 

 men were serfs. But there are three reasons why 

 such a country as England was then, is not the most 

 fit to provide cheap corn for such a country as 

 England is now ; first, because in the then barbarous 

 and despotic state of the English Government, no 

 dependence could have been placed on English 

 industry for a regular supply of corn; secondly, 

 because in the then barbarous condition of the 

 English people, capital and labour were not applied 

 to the growth of corn with that skill which renders 

 the produce great in proportion to the hands em- 

 ployed ; thirdly, because the savage ancestors of the 

 English would not have cared to buy such objects as 

 these, with which alone the English of this day could 

 buy foreign corn. The market would have been very 

 insecure ; the corn brought to it not very cheap ; and 

 of that corn whether cheap or dear, but a small 

 quantity would have been brought to market. This 

 is precisely the case of Poland, where the market is 

 liable to be shut up by the whim of a tyrant ; where 

 the produce of agricultural capital and labour, though, 

 by means of slavery, greater than it would be if the 

 capital and labour were cut up into fractions as nu- 

 merous as the cultivators, is much less than it would 



