The operation of these principles may be modified to any extent by the influence of others: but they exist; they are fully ascertained; and must henceforth serve as guides to all wise attempts to rectify an unjust distribution of the wealth of society. It is difficult to conceive how any sound mind can have withheld its assent to these grand principles, after they had once been clearly announced. It is very evident that some soils possess a far inferior power of producing food to others; and that, in the natural course of things, society will till the best soils first, and then the next best, and then soils of the third degree, and so on, as the demand for food increases; and that, as each adopted soil will yield less than the last, every application of capital will yield a smaller return—all applications of capital being regulated by the primary application of capital to land. It is difficult to see how this general principle can be disputed, however large may be the allowance required for the influence of other principles. Improvements in tillage, yet undreamed of, may increase the produce incalculably; but this increased produce will still be subjected to the same law. There will be an inequality of improved as of unimproved soils. New powers, chemical and mechanical, may be brought to bear on the soil for ever and ever; and still the same law must hold good while there is an original inequality in the material on which those powers are employed. Whether we obtain our food from the sea, or from new regions of the earth,—if we could fetch it down from the moon, or up from the centre of the globe,—the principle must hold good as long as there are limited and varying facilities for obtaining this food, and an increasing demand for it. More labour and more would be given to answer each new demand; and the return would still be less, till it came to a vanishing point. If this labour were that of stocks and stones in the service of a reasonable number of men, the simple fact would be that this reasonable number of men must live upon the produce of the labour already set in motion. But the labour in question is human labour, which eats in proportion as it works, and multiplies itself faster by far than it can augment its supply of food. The proprietor of a field feeds his five children from it, till they each have five children, and each of these five children in their turn. Does the produce of the paternal field augment itself five times, and then twenty-five times, to suit the growing wants of the new generations? It may possibly be made to yield double, and then three times, and then four times what it once did; but no kind or degree of skill can make the ratio of its productiveness the same as that of human increase. What primary rule of practice follows from the combination of these two principles? -------------- The increase of population is necessarily limited by the means of subsistence.