Mr Thorold Rogers has been guided by his study of prices to the conclusion that the standard of comfort in living began to rise among us from the Reformation of the sixteenth century progressively onwards; and that even during the eighteenth century the masses were enjoying a golden age. Between 1750 and 1800;--the period during which the factory system began to be known, and the problems of population and production were both closely discussed,--no fear of population getting ahead of subsistence suggested itself. Similarly during the Corn Law agitation 1840-6, the increase of production from English soil, notwithstanding the economico-agrarian law of diminishing return was proved to have outgrown the population. Later and more detailed statistics show that since 1831 population with us has increased 30 per cent., capital 100 per cent., purchasing power 600 per cent. During the last half century the average price of corn has been falling. Our demand for foreign corn has increased and is increasing. This evidence fortified by the income-tax returns, forbids the notion that during the last two centuries population in England has outstripped the means of its support. The conclusion is therefore irresistible that the natural tendencies to increase of inhabitants, whatever the occult possibilities may be, practically are counteracted by motives invisible and undefinable, perhaps, but not less potent. As a writer in _Macmillan's Magazine_[49] points out, population generally increases up to the relative limit set by the power of procuring subsistence at any given time and place. The absolute limit as is shrewdly remarked, could only be reached when the highest skill and organization have extracted the last possible morsel of food from the earth; that experience has not yet been reached. So far from population always getting ahead of subsistence, its increase is by no means invariably as rapid as the development of the food supply. Both between 1560 and 1760; again between 1830 and 1880, this seems to have been the case in England.