RETROSPECT AND FORECAST 211 



population, Great Britain is indebted to the ample 

 supplies of food that are poured into her from the 

 fertile grain-growing plains and rich pasturelands of 

 countries whose populations are as yet too sparse to 

 consume the food they produce ; and in this respect 

 Germany is beginning to resemble this country. 



But the countries from which our teeming population 

 draws its necessary supplies of food are increasing in 

 population at a great ratio, and will, it can scarcely be 

 doubted, continue to increase until the amount of food 

 they are capable of producing is only sufficient to 

 provide for their own wants. 



The population of the United Kingdom amounts 

 at present to forty-three millions ; and if its existing 

 rate of growth continues, it will in the middle of the 

 century show a population of more than sixty millions, 

 and at the commencement of the twenty-first century 

 of more than one hundred millions. 



I apprehend, however, that before the end of the 

 present century the ratio of increase will have been 

 considerably retarded from the growing difficulty of 

 purchasing from abroad sufficient food to maintain so 

 great a population, if not from the increasing inability 

 experienced by this country of expanding its commerce 

 in a degree sufficient to support a further expansion 

 of its industries. 



This inability will arise partly from those countries 

 which afford us markets manufacturing to supply their 

 own wants, and partly from the competition of other 

 manufacturing countries in these markets. 



