The Land and the Community, 133 



inhabitants. So far the Dutch, partly owing to the friendli- 

 ness of their neighbours, partly to their resources from com- 

 merce, and partly also to their facilities of access to the in- 

 terior by means of their elaborate system of canals, had proved 

 the exception to this general rule. But the Neapolitans had 

 often been obliged to stave off general starvation by buying 

 corn at famine prices. Even fertile France had been reduced 

 to the verge of want, so that in 1744 she was entirely de- 

 pendent for subsistence on the imports of England, her 

 hereditary foe. Secure as the Dutchman had hitherto seemed 

 to be in relying on commerce for his profits, the Frenchman 

 on his manufactures, the Spaniard on his mines, it was only 

 too possible for the untoward circumstances of a single war to 

 place each of them on a par with such nations as the Swiss, 

 the Poles, and the Danes, who had agriculture alone to look 

 to for the necessities of national life. It is not only essential 

 that a country's soil should be prolific, it must also be well 

 cultivated. Italy, for example, with all its natural sources 

 of fertility, had so discouraged the husbandman that famine 

 was seldom wholly absent from the peninsula. Did, then, 

 such arguments apply to Great Britain ? Was she absolutely 

 dependent on her own resources for the necessaries of life ? 

 If not at present, might she not become so under the stress 

 of adverse circumstances? A dependence solely on native 

 agriculture would imply that a nation was self-supporting. 

 How far Great Britain was so self-supporting it was difficult to 

 say. Cultivation requires the employment of a great variety 

 of carriages and implements. Its products clothe as well as 

 feed mankind, and the manufacture of woollen and leathern 

 goods monopolises a large amount of the national labour. 

 Then again the term " necessaries of life " is very elastic. 

 For example, the necessaries of one nationality might very 

 well be the luxuries of another. The rice, wine, oil, silk, 

 spices, and sugar of a southern climate are therefore exchanged 

 for those products of cultivation better adapted to a northern 

 soil, and after prolonged use the luxuries of one generation 

 become the necessaries of the next. On the other hand, if 

 nothing can be rightly called a necessary for which a cheaper 



