Mr. Malthus continues: “It will be said, perhaps, that the advance in the price of provisions will immediately turn some additional capital into the channel of agriculture, and thus occasion a much greater produce. But from experience it appears that this is an effect which sometimes follows very slowly, particularly if heavy taxes that affect agricultural industry, and an advance in the price of labour, had preceded the advance in the price of provisions. It may also be said, that the additional capital of the nation would enable it to import provisions sufficient for the maintenance of those whom its stock could employ. A small country with a large navy, and great accommodation for inland carriage, may indeed import and distribute an effectual quantity of provisions; but in large landed nations, if they may be so-called, an importation adequate at all times to the demand is scarcely possible.” In 1881 the inhabitants of the British Islands had to import food consisting of live and dead meat, butter, eggs, flour, and wheat, &c., at an expense of no less than one hundred and thirty-two millions sterling, inclusive of sugar, one of the requisites of nutrition, or at the cost of one hundred and eight millions sterling without sugar. And yet the price of butter was about 1s. 6d. the pound and meat about 9d. a pound in London, whilst milk sold for 5d. the quart. Thus we see how true the words of the great writer on population were, even writing before the days of steam and electric telegraphs, improvements in the way of obtaining food supplies that might easily have made food as cheap here as in New Zealand, had it not been for the excessive birth-rate that has been going on for the whole of this century in the United Kingdom.