33* Mr. William Pitt on ibe Production and 



more upon the obstinacy with which the same degree of consumption is persevered 

 in, than on the degree of the actual deficiency ; a deficiency of one half of a crop, 

 if the people would immediately consent to consume only one half of what they did 

 before, would produce little or no effect on the price of corn ; a deficiency of one 

 twelfth, if exacdy the same consumption were to continue for ten or eleven months, 

 might raise the price of corn to almost any height." Additional parish assistance 

 should therefore, in such cases, be given, not in bread but in substitutes; and every 

 proper means should, on such occasions, be used to lessen the consumption of corn. 



CONCLUSION. 



It remains for those who are at the head of society to determine, by their influ- 

 ence and example, whether a country shall go on in its natural course of plenty and 

 prosperity, for its numbers will increase in proportion to the means of subsistence ; 

 or whether, by neglecting its natural resources, that course shall be checked, and 

 those dreadful alternatives shall take place, which God and nature have appointed, 

 to make room for a succession of future generations. 



If the population of a country outrun its means of raising or acquiring subsist- 

 ence, it must unavoidably be checked by scarcity, famine, and disease; for such is 

 the inevitable law of nature, to level the population with the food of the world. 



Other circumstances being the same, Mr. Malthus says, " it may be affirmed, 

 that countries are populous according to the quantity of human food which they 

 produce, or can acquire ; and happy according to the liberality with which this 

 food divided, which is measured by the quantity a day's labour will purchase. 

 Corn countries are more populous than pasture countries, but their happiness does 

 not depend either upon their being thinly or fully inhabited, upon their poverty or 

 iheir riches; but on the proportion which the population and the food bear to each 

 other." Their happiness must however depend, in a great measure, upon their morals, 

 good order, and good government,which provides security both against internal com- 

 motions and external enemies; and as their strength will depend, in a great degree, 

 upon their numbers and population, and consequently upon the degree of improve- 

 ment and most perfect cultivation of the country, it is therefore both the interest 

 and duty of those who have the power, to use every means of promoting such 

 improvement, and thereby increasing the strength and security of their country. 



It is admitted, even by the advocates for human perfectibility, that " a class of 



