Besides, unless the quantity of food be increased, if strangers are imported to eat part of it, natives must in some degree starve; and if you augment the quantity of food, and keep it at a little lower price than in neighbouring nations, your own inhabitants will multiply; the state may take great numbers of them into their service when young; they soon come to be able to do something in the manufacturing way; they may be bound for a number of years, sufficient to indemnify the public for the first expence; and the encouragement alone of having bread cheaper than elsewhere, will bring you as many strangers as you incline to receive, provided a continual supply of food can be procured in proportion to the increase of the people. But I imagine that it is always better for a state to multiply by means of its own inhabitants, than by that of strangers; for many reasons which to me appear obvious. We come now to the second cause of high prices, to wit, a rise in the value of the articles of the first necessity, which we have said proceeds from the progress of industry having outstripped the progress of agriculture. Let me set this idea in a clearer light; for here it is shut up in too general terms to be rightly viewed on all sides. The idea of inhabitants being multiplied beyond the proportion of subsistence, seems to imply that there are too many already; and the demand for their industry having been the cause of their multiplication, proves that formerly there were too few. Add to this, that if, notwithstanding the rise upon the price of work proceeding from the scarcity of subsistence, the scale of home demand is found to preponderate, at the expence of foreign trade, this circumstance proves farther, that however the inhabitants may be already multiplied above the proportion of subsistence, their numbers are still too few for what is demanded of them at home; and for what is required of them towards promoting the prosperity of their country, in supporting their trade abroad. From this exposition of the matter, the remedy appears evident: both inhabitants and subsistence must be augmented. The question comes to be, in what manner, and with what precautions, must these operations be performed? Inhabitants are multiplied by reducing the price of subsistence, to the value which demand has fixed upon the work of those who are to consume it. This is only to be accomplished by augmenting the quantity, by importation from foreign parts, when the country cannot be made to produce more of itself.