, and to implant new tastes; for those countries must
accumulate a much larger amount of capital, before the diminished rate
of production will render the progress of capital necessarily less rapid
than the progress of population. The facility with which the wants of
the Irish are supplied, permits that people to pass a great part of
their time in idleness: if the population were diminished, this evil
would increase, because wages would rise, and therefore the labourer
would be enabled, in exchange for a still less portion of his labour, to
obtain all that his moderate wants require.

Give to the Irish labourer a taste for the comforts and enjoyments which
habit has made essential to the English labourer, and he would be then
content to devote a further portion of his time to industry, that he
might be enabled to obtain them. Not only would all the food now
produced be obtained, but a vast additional value in those other
commodities, to the production of which the now unemployed labour of the
country might be directed. In those countries, where the labouring
classes have the fewest wants, and are contented with the cheapest food,
the people are exposed to the greatest vicissitudes and miseries. They
have no place of refuge from calamity; they cannot seek safety in a
lower station; they are already so low, that they can fall no lower. On
any deficiency of the chief article of their subsistence, there are few
substitutes of which they can avail themselves, and dearth to them is
attended with almost all the evils of famine.

In the natural advance of society, the wages of labour will have a
tendency to fall, as far as they are regulated by supply and demand; for
the supply of labourers will continue to increase at the same rate,
whilst the demand for them will increase at a slower rate. If, for
instance, wages were regulated by a yearly increase of capital, at the
rate of 2 per cent., they would fall when it accumulated only at the
rate of 1-1/2 per cent. They would fall still lower when it increased
only at the rate of 1, or 1/2 per cent., and would continue to do so
until the capital became stationary, when wages also would become
stationary, and be only sufficient to keep up the numbers of the actual
population. I say that, under these circumstances, wages would fall, if
they were regulated only by the supply and demand of labourers; but we
must not forget, that wages are also regulated by the prices of the
commodities