About the middle of the eighteenth century, England, says our author, was genuinely, and in the strict sense of the economists, an agricultural nation. With London containing a population of more than four millions, and our other immense cities, this description of England is now quite out of place. About the middle of the last century, says Malthus, we were genuinely, and in the strict sense of the economists, an agricultural nation. “We have now, however, slipped out of the agricultural system into a state in which the commercial system clearly predominates, and there is but too much reason to fear that even our consumers and manufacturers will ultimately feel the disadvantage of the change. When a country in average years grows more wheat than it consumes, and is in the habit of exporting a part of it, those great variations of price which from the competition of commercial wealth, often produce lasting effects, cannot occur to the same extent. The wages of labour can never rise very much above the common price in other commercial countries; and under such circumstances England would have nothing to fear from the fullest and most open competition.” Our author thinks (chap. ix. book iii.) that if we were to lower the price of labour by encouraging the import of foreign corn, we should probably aggravate our evils. The decline in our agriculture would be certain. The British grower could not, in his own markets, stand the competition of foreign growers, in average years. Arable lands of a moderate quality would hardly pay the expenses of cultivation. Rich soils alone would yield a rent. Round our towns the appearance would be the same as usual; but in the interior of the country much of the land would be neglected, and almost universally, where it was practicable, pasture would take the place of tillage. This state of things would continue till the equilibrium was restored, either by the fall of British rent and wages, or an advance in foreign corn, or, what is more probable, by the union of both causes. But a period would have elapsed of considerable relative encouragement to manufactures, and relative discouragement to agriculture. A certain portion of capital would be taken from the land, and when the equilibrium was at length restored, the nation would probably be found dependent upon foreign supplies for a great portion of its subsistence: and unless some particular cause were to occasion a foreign demand greater than the home demand, its independence, in this respect, would not be recovered. In the natural course of things, a country which depends for a considerable part of its supply of corn upon its poorer neighbours may expect to see this supply gradually diminish, as those countries increase in riches and population, and have less surplus produce to spare.