230 General Observations. Bk. iii. 



produce support for a considerable number above 

 that which it employs ; and consequently if these 

 members of the society, or, as Sir James Steuart 

 calls them, the free hands, do not increase so as 

 to reach the limit of the number which can be 

 supported by the surplus produce, the whole po- 

 pulation of the country may continue for ages in- 

 creasing with the improving state of agriculture, 

 and yet always be able to export corn. But this 

 increase, after a certain period, will be very dif- 

 ferent from the natural and unrestricted increase 

 of population ; it will merely follow the slow 

 augmentation of produce from the gradual im- 

 provement of agriculture ; and population will 

 still be checked by the difficulty of procuring sub- 

 sistence. The precise measure of the population 

 in a country thus circumstanced will not indeed 

 be the quantity of food, because part of it is ex- 

 ported, but the quantity of employment. The 

 state of this employment however will necessarily 

 regulate the wages of labour, on which the power 

 of the lower classes of people to procure food de- 

 pends ; and according as the employment of the 

 country is increasing, whether slowly or rapidly, 

 these wages will be such, as either to check or 

 encourage early marriages ; such, as to enable a 

 labourer to support only two or three, or as many 

 as five or six children. 



In stating that in this, and all the other cages 

 and systems which have been considered, the 

 progress of population will be mainly regulated 



