like case, tend to raise profits or retard their fall; it merely substitutes the production of goods for foreign markets in the room of the home production of luxuries, leaving the employment for capital neither greater nor less than before.
It must, of course, be supposed that, with the increase of capital, population also increases; for, if it did not, the consequent rise of wages would bring down profits, in spite of any cheapness of food. Suppose, then, that the population of Great Britain goes on increasing at its present rate, and demands every year a supply of imported food considerably beyond that of the year preceding. This annual increase in the food demanded from the exporting countries can only be obtained either by great improvements in their agriculture, or by the application of a great additional capital to the growth of food. The former is likely to be a very slow process, from the rudeness and ignorance of the agricultural classes in the food-exporting countries of Europe, while the British colonies and the United States are already in possession of most of the improvements yet made, so far as suitable to their circumstances. There remains, as a resource, the extension of cultivation. And on this it is to be remarked that the capital by which any such extension can take place is mostly still to be created. In Poland, Russia, Hungary, Spain, the increase of capital is extremely slow. In America it is rapid, but not more rapid than the population. The principal fund at present available for supplying this country with a yearly increasing importation of food is that portion of the annual savings of America which has heretofore been applied to increasing the manufacturing establishments of the United States, and which free trade in corn may possibly divert from that purpose to growing food for