By degrees the tendency of the system became obvious. Bounties on the
import of wood, and wool, and flax, and other raw materials, tended to
"the discouragement of agriculture" at home, and bounties on the
export of manufactures tended to drive into the work of converting,
and exchanging the products of other lands the labour and capital that
would otherwise have been applied to the work of production at home.
The necessary consequence of this was, that the difficulty of
obtaining these raw materials, instead of diminishing with the
progress of population, tended to increase, and then it was, at the
distance of a quarter of a century from the date of the publication of
"_The Wealth of Nations_," that the foundation of the new school was
laid by Mr. Malthus, who taught that all the distress existing in the
world was the inevitable consequence of a great law of nature, which
provided that food should increase only in arithmetical progression,
while population might increase in geometrical progression. Next came
Mr. Ricardo, who furnished a law of the occupation of the earth,
showing, and conclusively, as he supposed, that the work of
cultivation was always commenced on the rich soils, yielding a large
return to labour, and that as population increased, men were compelled
to resort to others, each in succession less fertile than its
predecessor--the consequence of which was that labour became daily
less productive, the power to obtain food diminished, and the power to
demand rent increased, the poor becoming daily poorer, weaker, and
more enslaved, as the rich became richer and more powerful. Next came
the elder Mill, who showed that, in obedience to the law thus
propounded by Mr. Ricardo, the return to capital and labour applied to
the work of cultivation must be "continually decreasing," and the
annual fund from which sayings are made, continually diminishing. "The
difficulty of making savings is thus," he adds, "continually
augmented, and at last they must totally cease." He regarded it