interfering with future production, yet, in reference to the whole
of the actual produce and the rate at which it is increasing, there
is no part of the price so disposable. In the employment of fresh
capital upon the land to provide for the wants of an increasing
population, whether this fresh capital be employed in bringing more
land under the plough or in improving land already in cultivation,
the main question always depends upon the expected returns of this
capital; and no part of the gross profits can be diminished without
diminishing the motive to this mode of employing it. Every
diminution of price not fully and immediately balanced by a
proportionate fall in all the necessary expenses of a farm, every
tax on the land, every tax on farming stock, every tax on the
necessaries of farmers, will tell in the computation; and if, after
all these outgoings are allowed for, the price of the produce will
not leave a fair remuneration for the capital employed, according to
the general rate of profits and a rent at least equal to the rent of
the land in its former state, no sufficient motive can exist to
undertake the projected improvement.

It was a fatal mistake in the system of the Economists to consider
merely production and reproduction, and not the provision for an
increasing population, to which their territorial tax would have
raised the most formidable obstacles.

On the whole then considering the present accumulation of
manufacturing population in this country, compared with any other in
Europe, the expenses attending enclosures, the price of labour and
the weight of taxes, few things seem less probable, than that Great
Britain should naturally grow an independent supply of corn; and
nothing can be more certain, than that if the prices of wheat in