Ch. ii. in Sweden. 281 



of corn at a very advanced price, There is no 

 adequate encouragement therefore to corn mer- 

 chants to import in great abundance; and the 

 effect of a deficiency of one-fourth or one-third 

 in the crops is, to oblige the labourer to content 

 himself with nearly three-fourths or two-thirds 

 of the corn which he used before, and to supply 

 the rest by the use of any substitutes, which 

 Necessity, the mother of Invention, may suggest. 

 I have said nearly ; because it is difficult to sup- 

 pose that the importations should not be some- 

 thing greater in years of scarcity than in common 

 years, though no marked difference of this kind 

 appears in the tables published by Cantzlaer. 

 The greatest importation, according to these 

 tables, was in the year 1768, when it amounted 

 to 590,265 tuns of grain ;* but even this greatest 

 importation is only 150,000 tuns above the aver- 

 age wants of the country ; and what is this, to 

 supply a deficiency of one-fourth or one-third 

 of a crop ? The whole importation is indeed in 

 this respect trifling. 



The population of Sweden, at the time when 

 Cantzlaer wrote, was about two millions and a 

 half.t He allows four tuns of grain to a man.J 

 Upon this supposition the annual wants of Sweden 

 would be ten millions of tuns, and four or five 

 hundred thousand would go but a little way in 

 supplying a deficiency of two millions and a half 



* Mi-moircs dii Royaume de Suede, tabic xlii. p. 418. 

 f Id. ch. vi. p. 184. 

 % Id. p. 196. 



