The process by which he has arrived at the conclusion, that a measure confessedly so disastrous in its immediate consequences will ultimately turn out beneficial to one section at least of the landed interest, seems to be this: He thinks that, in the chief corn-growing countries of the Continent, cultivation is already so generally extended over all the soils capable of yielding any return, that the land cannot, in any circumstances, give employment to a greater number of the inhabitants than it does already; whereas Great Britain contains, in his opinion, a much larger proportional area of improvable soil, which forms a reserve or provision for the future increase of our population. A succession of bad harvests in Germany or France, or any considerable addition to their present population, would necessarily reduce these countries, he believes, to extreme famine and misery; because, the land being already fully occupied and filled up, and their surplus numbers having no considerable outlet in manufacturing or commercial industry, they have no resources to fall back upon in seasons of calamity. But in England there still remains a large extent of "woods, and groves planted and preserved for ornament, parks, pleasure-grounds, lawns, shrubberies, old grass-fields producing only crops for luxury, such as pasture and hay for the finer breeds of horses;" while a still larger area of arable ground is left uncultivated in Ireland and Scotland. Hence, as our population increases, we possess a safety-valve in our untilled soil which does not exist on the Continent; we have still the means of subsisting our daily-increasing numbers; and, so long at least as these means last, it is probable that the owners of the already cultivated lands will be left in the peaceable enjoyment of their property. But that possession would not have been secure had the abolition of the Corn Laws not been conceded at the time it was--the people might have driven the landowners from their occupations, as they did in the first French Revolution; "the free importation of food has averted a similar social convulsion, and has deprived the agitator and hireling speech-maker of his plea of oppression from class interests, and conventional laws in favour of the landowners."[37] These seem to be the grounds on which Mr. Laing regards the abolition of the Corn Laws as a Conservative measure--"which will preserve, for some generations at least, to our nobility, gentry, and landed interests, their domains, their estates, and their proper social interests."