theories are of English origin, and were first suggested, as is obvious, by observation of those evils in the social condition of England, which only within the present century have become of crying magnitude. These evils have manifested themselves in the only country in Europe in which all the land, the great food-producing machine, has come to be owned by so small a class, that the great body of the community seem to have no part or lot in it; while, at the same time, those ancient patriarchal and religious institutions, which certainly did much to mitigate the effects of an undue aggregation of landed property in the hands of a few, have entirely died out or been destroyed. It is the boast of the English, that the relations of vassal and lord, clansman and chieftain, serf and master, no longer exist among them. The English barons no longer support each an army of retainers to be their followers in war, and to keep up their feudal state. English prelates and monks no longer dispense open-handed hospitality and charity at the gates of richly endowed monasteries. These institutions of the Middle Ages have been destroyed in England, root and branch; but their fall has not, as in many parts of the Continent, caused the landed property once aggregated in their support to be parcelled out again, with great minuteness and some approach to equality, among those who were formerly maintained by it in rude plenty, though not in peace or perfect freedom. Feudal relations have been done away, but the magnitude of feudal estates has not been diminished. The Highland chieftain has banished his clansmen from their hereditary possessions and hereditary dependence on him, has compelled them to emigrate or starve, has turned his vast Highland estate into sheepwalks and deer-parks, and has himself become a wealthy English nobleman. A cool pecuniary calculation of profit and loss has induced him to take this step. The same motive has caused the great English landholders to depopulate their estates, driving the rural tenantry into the towns and manufacturing districts, where they must become operatives or paupers. The consequence of this aggregation of landed estates, and this mode of deriving the largest possible rent from them, has been a fearful increase of pauperism, and a general apprehension lest the tax for the support of the poor should become so large as eventually to beggar the rich also. No won

der that any increase of the population should be deemed an evil, when it appears from the returns, that one tenth part of that population are legalized paupers; and as not the same individuals, in all cases, receive public relief each successive year, it is probable that as many as one sixth of the whole number of the people are, or have been, dependent on public charity.

Systems and theories of political economy suggested by circumstances so anomalous and peculiar as these, or contrived with a view to explain and justify them, are not likely to be applicable to other countries, or to contain many general truths. England is the only country in the world in which the laboring class is entirely dependent on the wages of hired labor; on the Continent, in most instances, they have a small property on which they can subsist, though poorly, in seasons when they cannot obtain employment elsewhere for time not needed at home, so as to add to their scanty incomes a small amount received as wages. If they have not a little land which is entirely their own, they have a sort of prescriptive right to cultivate the land of others, on certain fixed terms, either as metayers, giving all the labor for a portion of the produce, or as feudal subjects bound to the soil, and having a right of maintenance from it. In neither case are they driven into the labor-market, as their only refuge from starvation, there constantly to depress wages by their frantic competition for employment, or to give up the struggle in despair by throwing themselves upon compulsory public charity.

Ricardo's theory of rent was discovered or invented with reference to this anomalous state of things. It is an attempt to establish as a law of nature the general fact, that an increase of the numbers of a people, under any circumstances, is an evil, because it creates an additional demand for food, which can only be met by having recourse to poorer or less advantageously situated soils, and by applying more labor and capital with constantly diminishing returns. It is abundantly confuted by facts, and can easily be shown to be unsound in principle. The assertion of Mr. Mill, "that a greater number of people cannot collectively be so well provided for as a smaller,” becomes absurd when applied to an infant colony, established in a vast territory, on a virgin soil. Who can seriously maintain, that an increase of population is an evil in British Australia,

or in the great valley of the Mississippi? It might as well be said that the people of Ohio, Indiana, and Wisconsin are straitened for want of room, as that their proportionate supply of food was lessened by the increase of their numbers. Among them, surely, it is apparent that an increase of population is an increase of productive power, and hence a proportionate increase of the surplus of grain and other articles of sustenance, which, after satisfying all their own wants in the amplest manner, they are able to send off to satisfy the wants of other nations. The average price of flour in Philadelphia market between 1800 and 1810, exceeded eight dollars a barrel; from 1810 to 1820, the average was about nine dollars. The population of this country in 1800 was but little over five millions; in 1820, it was somewhat less than ten millions. It is now more than twenty-three millions. And is the nation, in consequence of this vast increase of numbers, less bountifully supplied with food? On the contrary, the price of flour and other bread-stuffs has greatly diminished, and we are supplying the world with them. The average price of flour for several years preceding 1853, was less than six dollars.

Our average annual export of articles of food now probably exceeds thirty-five millions of dollars in value; and in case of any failure of the crops in Europe, it could probably be raised to seventy-five millions, without materially lessening the enjoyments of the people of this country, or raising the price of grain to a point beyond the reach of the poorest class of the population. In 1847, the year of famine in Ireland, our export of bread-stuffs actually rose to nearly sixty-nine millions, and in 1853, owing to a partial failure of the crops and to the Russian war in Europe, it was about sixty-six millions. Do these facts afford any evidence that the twenty-three millions, who now constitute the American nation, are not so well provided for as the five millions who occupied their place only fifty years ago? Are they not rather a demonstration of the principle, that the increase of numbers is an increase of productive power, and a consequent proportionate increase of the means of subsistence, - of the necessaries, comforts, and luxuries of life?

But it may be said that America is an exceptional case, and that we have no right to argue from the fortunate circumstances in which we are placed, to general conclusions which would

be wholly inapplicable in other portions of the world. We answer, that the facilities afforded by commerce now really connect all the civilized nations of the earth into one great community, the supply of all articles being made everywhere proportionate to the demand and to the ability to pay for them. Grain and other articles of provision are matters both of foreign and domestic traffic; every country can obtain an abundance of them, though her own soil may be entirely barren. Great Britain has no difficulty in obtaining a supply of cotton, though the cotton-plant will not grow in the British Isles. Grain and other provisions can be purchased even with greater facility than cotton and tobacco, or coffee and tea; for these latter articles can be raised only in a few favored countries, while the market of the whole world is open for the sale of food. In fact, the markets of New York and Liverpool now regulate each other; since the abrogation of the cornlaws, the price of grain cannot rise five per cent in the latter place without a corresponding enhancement of price in New York within one fortnight, the time which it takes for a steamer to cross the Atlantic and convey the intelligence; and before another week has elapsed, ship-loads of corn are stemming their way eastward, to supply the trifling deficiency indicated even by this slight change in the market. It is no more a hardship or a disadvantage for England, than for our own State of Massachusetts, to be obliged to buy a portion of the articles of subsistence for her population; and the deficiency in our own case, it may be remarked, is relatively greater than in the mother country; for we never raise food enough for our own consumption, while the English crops, in ordinary years, suffice for nearly the whole English demand. In both cases, it may be said, the deficiency proceeds, not from natural causes, but from the choice of man. It is found more profitable to devote the larger portion of the labor of the two countries to commerce and manufactures, and to buy a portion of the food that is required, than to cultivate the soil to the full extent of which it is capable, and thereby raise the whole stock of provisions. If a given amount of labor employed in spinning yarn and weaving cloth will produce enough to buy two bushels of grain, while, if devoted immediately to tilling the ground, it will raise only one bushel, it is certain that the labor will be

given to manufactures, and not to agriculture; and the deficiency of food thus created, (if it can be called a deficiency,) will afford no reason for impeaching the bounty of Providence, and no cause for fear lest the increase of the population should outstrip the increase of the supply of food.

We say, then, that this theory of rent, being inapplicable and unsound in the case of America, is consequently untrue in its application to Europe generally, and even to England. An increase of the English population does create a larger demand for food. But this demand does not oblige the people to have recourse to the poorer soils in order to enlarge the crops, nor even to apply more capital with less profit to the soil already under tillage; it simply obliges them to import more food from America and the countries on the Baltic and the Black Sea. And the supply which these countries may afford is indefinite ; the only reason why they do not now send more corn to England, is that England needs no more. There is every reason to believe, that if Great Britain should altogether cease to be a grain-producing country, if it should devote all its fields to pasturage, these other countries would still keep the English market bountifully stocked with grain, and with no material enhancement of its price. The possible supply of wheat and maize from the back country of the United States defies all calculation; it is kept dammed up there now, because the producers know, if it were thrown upon the market at once, that it would sink the price below the cost of production. But because it exists in excess, if the capacity of the market were increased, the supply might be indefinitely enlarged without any material or even perceptible enhancement of price. There is no more risk that our back country will be drained of wheat, than that the great Mississippi will drain it of water. Lower the bar at its mouth, or sink the level of the broad ocean itself, and the rivers will yet continue to run, for their springs are perennial. The bounty of God feeds them. Instead of saying, then, that population presses on the means of subsistence, the true proposition would be, that the supply of food presses hard upon the increase of population. The force of the pressure being thus turned the other way, the supply of food might be indefinitely increased, without any enhancement of price from the enlarged demand.