40 WAGES AND EMPIRE 



These three territories are capable of affording 

 sufficient good land to maintain seven hundred and 

 fifty million people, while their combined populations 

 are at present not two hundred millions. There is there- 

 fore present in those quarters a superfluity of territory 

 capable of accommodating on good land five hundred 

 and fifty millions, which is more than twice the present 

 excess population of Europe. It would therefore be 

 quite possible by spreading the excess population of 

 Europe over the New Worlds to provide good land for 

 all its inhabitants. 



It is no part of this work, however, to advocate the 

 spreading of the excess population of Europe over the 

 less populated parts of the earth, nor to examine how 

 such an end might be attained. It is sufficient to ob- 

 serve that the living of the people of Europe is beaten 

 down below the scale which the state of knowledge and 

 the land resources of the world are at present capable 

 of affording. 



A shortage of land will beat doicn subsistence whatever 

 the social system of society. — The principle that a people's 

 subsistence depends on its land, although laid down in 

 general terms without reference to the system under 

 which the distribution of production takes place, or to 

 the question of property in land, applies equally what- 

 ever the method of distribution or of land tenure. 



Suppose production to take place under the system 

 of private property in land, then as long as there is a 

 superabundance of land cultivation will be restricted to 

 the better quality, all persons will be able to have as 

 much of good land as they want, and the subsistence 

 of everybody therefore will be regulated entirely by the 

 power which science gives to labour and by no other 

 cause. 



But when the amount of good land is not sufficient 

 for the maintenance of all the inhabitants, some of them 



