532 General Deductions from the Bk. ii. 



I have mentioned some cases where population 

 may permanently increase without a proportional 

 increase in the means of subsistence. But it is 

 evident that the variation in different states be- 

 tween the food and the numbers supported by it 

 is restricted to a limit beyond which it cannot 

 pass. In every country, the population of which 

 is not absolutely decreasing, the food must be 

 necessarily sufficient to support and continue the 

 race of labourers. 



Other circumstances being the same, 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 is divided, or the 

 quantity which a day's labour will purchase. 

 Corn countries are more populous than pasture 

 countries, and rice countries more populous than 

 corn countries. But their happiness does not 

 depend either upon their being thinly or fully in- 

 habited, upon their poverty or their riches, their 

 youth or their age ; but on the proportion which 

 the population and the food bear to each other. 



This proportion is generally the most favour- 

 able in new colonies, where the knowledge and 

 industry of an old state operate on the fertile un- 

 appropriated land of a new one. In other cases 

 the youth or the age of a state is not, in this re- 

 spect, of great importance. It is probable that 

 the food of Great Britain is divided in more 

 liberal shares to her inhabitants at the present 

 period, than it was two thousand, three thousand, 



