Cli. xiv. General Observations. 237 



for new colonies to increase with the same rapidity 

 as old states. 



The prejudices on the subject of population bear 

 a very striking resemblance to the old prejudices 

 about specie ; and we know how slowly and with 

 what difficulty these last have yielded to juster 

 conceptions. Politicians, observing that states 

 which were powerful and prosperous were almost 

 invariably populous, have mistaken an effect for 

 a cause, and have concluded, that their population 

 was the cause of their prosperity, instead of their 

 prosperity being the cause of their population ; 

 as the old political economists concluded that the 

 abundance of specie was the cause of national 

 wealth, instead of being the effect of it. The 



necessarilij have its means of subsistence rather augmented than di- 

 minished by that augmentation of its population ; and the reverse. 

 The proposition is, to be sure, expressed rather obscurely ; Init 

 from the context his meaning evidently is, that every increase ot 

 population tends to increase rehitive plenty, and vice versa. He 

 concludes his proofs by observing that, if the facts which he lias 

 thus brought forward and connected do not serve to remove the 

 fears of those, who doubt the possibility of this country producini^ 

 abundance to sustain its increasing population, (were it to augment 

 in a ratio greatly more progressive than it has yet done,) he shoukl 

 doubt whether they could be convinced of it, were one even to 

 rise from the dead to tell them so. I agree with Mr. A. entirely, 

 respecting the importance of directing a greater part of the national 

 industry to agriculture ; but from the circumstance of its being 

 possible for a country, with a certain direction of its industry, 

 always to grow corn sufficient for its own supplies, although it may 

 be very populous, he has been led into the strange error of sup- 

 posing, that an aj^ricultural coinitry could support an unchecked 

 population. 



