Ch, xiv. General Observ(ili(ms. 243 



this, as the same author justly observes, is to dress 

 and water a piece of land without sowing it, and 

 yet to expect a crop. 



What is here said of the order of precedence 

 with respect to agriculture and population, does 

 not invalidate what was said in an earlier part of 

 this work on the tendency to an oscillation or al- 

 ternation in the increase of population and food in 

 the natural course of their progress. In this pro- 

 gress nothing is more usual than for the population 

 to increase at certain periods faster than food ; 

 indeed it is a part of the general principle that 

 it should do so ; and when the money wages of 

 labour are prevented from falling by the employ- 

 ment of the increasing population in manufactures, 

 the rise in the price of corn which the increased 

 competition for it occasions is practically the most 

 natural and frequent stimulus to agriculture. But 

 then it must be recollected that the greater relative 

 increase of population absolutely implies a previ- 

 ous increase of food at some time or other greater 

 than the lowest wants of the people. Without 

 this, the population could not possibly have gone 

 forward.* 



* According to the principle of population, the human race has 

 a tendency to increase faster than food. It has therefore a constant 

 tendency to people a country fully up to the limits of subsistence, 

 but by the laws of nature it can never go beyond them, meaning, 

 of course, by these limits, the lowest qua'itity of food which will 

 maintain a stationary population, ropulalion, therefore, can never, 

 strictly speaking, precede food. 



R 2 



