158 Political EcoJiomy. 
mile, does not establish the existence of a superior deg-ree of indi- 
vidual prosperity, or of national wealth and power.* 
There can be no doubt that, if in England you were to cutup, 
all the large estates into very small farms of ten, and fifteen acres 
each ; if you were to turn all the pasture, and pleasure grounds, 
into wheat and potatoe fields, make men and women perform the 
labour of oxen and horses, and habituate the present hardy race 
to a meagre diet — you might succeed in adding one third, or per- 
haps, one half, to its present population. But England would then 
he no longer what she is ! She would present, like China, or Flan- 
ders, a surface crowded with beings, scarcely human, all absorbed 
in barely prolonging a miserable existence. f— Instead of British 
cottagers, and farmers, you would have Egyptian fellahs,— an easy 
harvest for the sword of any invader ! an useless load to the soil 
they encumber ! 
Here is one of the secrets of Bonaparte's successes.— There is 
no statesman, there is no philosopher, there is no philanthropist, 
who could not prefer, for their sake, and for his own, the 150 per 
square mile in England, or, even the still fewer per square mile 
in this country, to the 244 i,n Italy, or the 333 in China !:): 
“ The commercial nations have uniformly fallen before the agri- 
cultural nations^ 
But no nation ought to be, or can be, exclusively commercial. 
But, in complicated questions, all vague appeals to history are 
extremely apt to lead to false conclusions. But we know so little 
of the people of Tyre, and of Sidon. But Tyre, and Sidon, and 
Carthage, which you adduce in proof, existed as nations previously 
* It does under a good government : according to the principles laid 
down by Dr. Bollman in the beginning of this essay ; to which I give my full 
assent. “ That system of political economy is the best, which affords com- 
fortable subsistence to the greatest number of persons upon the smallest 
“ territory ; provided the system be permanent in its principles.’* If then 
we see a country very full of inhabitants, living in reasonable plenty and com- 
fort, we have a right to conclude accordingly. T. C. 
I England is in fact at the present moment, and has for many years been, 
cmxvded with beings who drag out a miserable existence. It is true that 
latelyjthe war has thinned them, and created something nearer tp a sufficiency 
to support life for the rest : but where else is the country, where one eighth 
of the population are paupers ? Soon after the peace of Amiens, in 1803, the 
poor’s rates of England, amounted to 5,318,000 pounds : the returns were 
again to be made this year, 1813 : but I have yet seen no acount of them. 
T. 
c I regard China as greatly exaggerated. T. C. 
