supplying this vast multitude must be _eight millions seven hundred and twelve thousand bushels per day_.” The species of food used is the produce of the trees. We thus find, that by a moderate calculation a single flock of pigeons in the back woods of America consumes in one day as great an amount of food, whether by weight or measure, as would support the whole seventeen millions of people in Great Britain for at least a week. The mind is lost in wonder in contemplation of so magnificent a fact. The faculty of thought is bewildered in pondering on so striking an instance of the astonishing bounty of the great Author of Nature in providing for the wants of his creatures. Where, where, may we then ask, have the predicters of famine been examining the sources of food for man? On what have their eyes and their thoughts been fixed, that they have passed over this prospect of inexhaustible plenty? It would seem that they have never looked beyond the confines of that little spot of land in the ocean, which I have alluded to, and whose superabundant thousands require only to be transferred to that division on the earth’s surface holding out food, raiment, and residence for their gratuitous acceptance, in order that society may right itself. The above is the _first_ fact I have to offer in the elucidation of this important question; and I maintain, in direct opposition to those who have taken a contrary view of the subject—among whom I am sorry to include persons otherwise distinguished for the clearness and comprehensiveness of their views of the social compact—that until the _whole_ earth has been peopled, and until it can hold no more, it cannot rationally be said that the means of subsistence are inadequate for the wants of the population. These means are no more inadequate than that the produce of a kitchen-garden is insufficient to support the family to which it belongs; and if this family be prevented from seeking its subsistence beyond its garden walls, and so be half starved, their miserable case is exactly parallel with that of this over-populated island. Remove, I would say, all restrictions of a certain description; do not unnaturally foster population either in a particular part of the country, or at a particular time; LET MANKIND ALONE: and, in the same manner that fluids find their level, so will the redundant population of Great Britain and Ireland be profitably dispersed over territories hitherto untrodden by the footsteps of civilised men.