their ease and consume a greater quantity of provisions, there
would be less food remaining to divide among the rest, and
consequently each man's patent would be diminished in value or
the same number of pieces of silver would purchase a smaller
quantity of subsistence.

An increase of population without a proportional increase of
food will evidently have the same effect in lowering the value of
each man's patent. The food must necessarily be distributed in
smaller quantities, and consequently a day's labour will purchase
a smaller quantity of provisions. An increase in the price of
provisions would arise either from an increase of population
faster than the means of subsistence, or from a different
distribution of the money of the society. The food of a country
that has been long occupied, if it be increasing, increases
slowly and regularly and cannot be made to answer any sudden
demands, but variations in the distribution of the money of a
society are not infrequently occurring, and are undoubtedly among
the causes that occasion the continual variations which we
observe in the price of provisions.

The poor laws of England tend to depress the general
condition of the poor in these two ways. Their first obvious
tendency is to increase population without increasing the food
for its support. A poor man may marry with little or no prospect
of being able to support a family in independence. They may be
said therefore in some measure to create the poor which they
maintain, and as the provisions of the country must, in
consequence of the increased population, be distributed to every
man in smaller proportions, it is evident that the labour of