576 
Agricultural Statistics. 
acres to about ten million new claimants.* " It is one of the 
obvious physical effects of the increase of population, that the 
proportion of land to each person diminishes ; and the decrease 
is such, that within the last fifty years the number of acres to 
each person living has fallen from 5"4 to 2"7 acres in Great 
Britain, from 4 to 2 acres in England and Wales. As a counter- 
vailing advantage, the people have been brought into each other's 
neighbourhood ; their average distance from each other has been 
reduced in the ratio of from 3 to 2 ; labour has been divided ; and 
the quantity of produce, either consisting of, or exchangeable 
for, the necessaries, conveniences, and elegancies of life, has, in 
the mass, largely increased, and is increasing at a more rapid rate 
than the population." | 
By a similar calculation Mr. Porter shows a reduction of the 
cultivated land in the same period, from two acres to an acre 
and two-thirds to each individual, and tliat the same quantity 
of land Avhich supported less than 4000 inhabitants at the 
beginning of the century now supports 6000. By how small 
an amount of additional labour this increased production has been 
effected will be seen from the fact that while the total number of 
families in Great Britain increased between 1811 and 1831 at the 
rate of 34 per cent, the number engaged in agriculture increased 
only 7x per cent. J 
But there is another feature to be noticed, necessitating the 
contemplation of one more table of figures, and that is the pro- 
gress of the average price of wheat during this period. While 
the resource of new inclosure was steadily diminishing, popula- 
tion incrensing, importation affording on an average of the period 
of the half-century not more than three ioceks' consumption in the 
year,§ (calculated by Mr. Porter on the ratio of one quarter per 
* See the Statement by Mr. W. Couling, C.E., drawn up for the Select Com- 
mittee of the House of Commons on Emigration, 1827. 
t ' General Results of the Census, 1851.' 
+ Porter's ' Progress of the Nation,' ch. i. p. IGl. 
§ See a very interesting calculation, showing tliis result, in Porter's work, 
ch. i. p. 140. A cause of frequent error amongst our statistical writers exists 
in the use of the word 'Kingdom,' which is sometimes put for 'England,' some- 
times for 'England and Wales,' sometimes for 'Great Britain' (which adds 
Scotland), and sometimes for the " United Kingdom " (which comprehends Ire- 
land). It is difficult, even in the late Mr. Porter's valuable work, to distinguish 
always which is meant ; and some of the calculations can hardly be reconciled 
with the apparently intended area. In a letter which appeared lately in the 
' Mark Lane Express,' attacking with some asperity the estimate of last year's 
wheat crop published by Mr. Caird, the writer gravely proceeds to show the 
'• ii-reparable injury done to society " in Mr. Caird's figures, by applying his cal- 
culation, made after " travelling through the entire island from the Solent to 
.Jolin o'Groat's," to "the population, on the census of 1841, of </(e United King- 
dom." Mr. Caird having set the example by putting down these words opposite 
an estimate stated as "the result of individual inquiry, &c., through the wheat- 
growing districts of Great Britain," to which alone his estimate of 131 million 
