┌──────┬────────────┬──────────┬──────────┐ │ │ │ INCREASE │ ANNUAL │ │YEARS.│POPULATION. │ Each │ RATE │ │ │ │Decennial │ of │ │ │ │ Period. │ Increase │ │ │ │ │per cent. │ ├──────┼────────────┼──────────┼──────────┤ │ 1801 │ 10,917,433 │ │ │ │ 1811 │ 12,424,120 │1,506,687 │ 1.274 │ │ 1821 │ 14,402,643 │1,978,523 │ 1.489 │ │ 1831 │ 16,564,138 │2,161,495 │ 1.408 │ │ 1841 │ 18,813,786 │2,249,648 │ 1.279 │ │ 1851 │ 21,121,967 │2,308,181 │ 1.186 │ └──────┴────────────┴──────────┴──────────┘ This increased production of food consists chiefly of grain, green crops, and garden vegetables, countless in variety, and highly nutritious and grateful, completely reversing the nature of the national subsistence compared with that of former times, and giving to the masses of the people a constant and unfailing supply, winter and summer, of fresh vegetable nutriment. This increased production of food is mainly of home growth, for the supply of wheat from foreign sources would scarcely suffice to afford to each person two gallons of flour annually. This increased production has been obtained partly by a progressive increase in the quantity of land brought under cultivation, which now amounts for the United Kingdom to upwards of 40,000,000 of acres, by far the greater part of which is employed in the production of human food; and partly by the employment of capital in the improvement of the soil, by which large tracts that a few years ago were wholly sterile, or deemed incapable of producing wheat, now yield some of the finest grain in England.[17] Footnote 17: “In 1821 almost the only grain produced in the Fens of Cambridgeshire consisted of oats; since then, by draining and manuring, the capability of the soil has been so changed that these fens now produce some of the finest wheat that is grown in England; and this more costly grain now constitutes the main dependence of the farmers in a district where 14 years ago its produce was scarcely attempted.”—_Porter’s Progress of the Nation._