more thinly-inhabited ones; the multiplication of the human race would
become excessive in the seats in which it had first taken root, and the
desert parts of the world would never, but under the pressure of absolute
necessity, be explored. The first command of God to man, "Be fruitful, and
multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it," would be frustrated.
The apprehensions of the Malthusians as to an excessive increase of
mankind, with its attendant dangers, would be realized in particular
places, while nineteen-twentieths of the earth lay neglected in a state of
nature. The desert would be left alone in its glory. The world would be
covered with huge and densely-peopled excrescences--with Babylons, Romes,
and Londons--in which wealth, power, and corruption were securely and
permanently intrenched, and from which the human race would ne'er diverge
but under the pressure of absolute impossibility to wrench a subsistence
from their over-peopled vicinities.

These dangers, threatening alike to the moral character and material
welfare of nations, are completely prevented by the simple law, the
operations of which we every day see around us--viz. that wealth,
civilization, and knowledge, add rapidly and indefinitely to the powers of
manufacturing and commercial, but comparatively slowly to those of
agricultural industry. This simple circumstance effectually provides for
the dispersion of the human race, and the check of an undue growth in
particular communities. The old state can always undersell the young one
in manufactures, but it is everlastingly undersold by them in agriculture.
Thus the equalization of industry is introduced, the dispersion of the
human race secured, and a limit put to the perilous multiplication of its
members in particular communities. The old state can never rival the young
ones around it in raising subsistence; the young ones can never rival the
old one in manufactured articles. Either a free trade takes place between
them, or restrictions are established. If the commercial intercourse
between them is unrestricted, agriculture is destroyed, and with it
national strength is undermined in the old state, and manufactures are
nipped in the bud in the young ones. If restrictions prevail, and a war of
tariffs is introduced, the agriculture of the old state, and with it its
national strength, is preserved, but its export of manufactures to the
adjoining states is checked, and they establish growing f