ground cannot feed the same number of people with animal food,
there will be a necessity of importing the deficiency.

The change that this produces, when once it begins to operate, is a
most powerful and effectual cause of decline; and, without the
intervention of conquest, or any violent revolution, would of itself be
sufficient to impoverish, in the first instance, and, in the second, to
depopulate a country.

We find every country that was once wealthy, but that has fallen [end
of page #138] into decline, is thinly peopled; and if it were not for the
want of information, from which the cause may be traced, a deficiency
of food might most probably be found to be one of the most efficient.

Flanders, which is one of the most fertile countries in Europe, and has
experienced a partial decline, is probably not near so fully peopled as
it once was. Its present population would not support those armies, or
give it that rank amongst nations which it at one time maintained. It is
true there have been persecutions and emigrations, which must have
reduced the population of the country for a time, but not to an extent
that would account for such a diminution in its numbers, as there is
reason to think has taken place.

Ghent, a town of an amazing size, could, at one time, send out fifty
thousand fighting men. It certainly could not now (that is to say, at the
time the French subdued the country) have furnished one-fourth part
of the number. Ghent is not the only town in this situation, the others
have all fallen off in the same manner. When manufactures declined,
the people did not go to live in the country, for that also is thinly
inhabited, the richness of the soil being taken into consideration.

The peasants of that country lived much better than their French
neighbours; they apparently brought up their children with more ease,
and fed them more fully; but the country was not so populous, in
proportion to its fertility.

In southern climates, where the heat of the sun is great, and vegetation
difficult, unless the crop is of a nature to protect the ground from its
effects, natural grass is never luxuriant; and the cattle are neither so
large nor so fat as in more northerly latitudes. Corn, on the other hand,
which rises to a sufficient height, before the hot season, to protect the
ground from the rays of the sun, is a more profitable crop; and, indeed,
the only one that could (potatoes excepted) support a great popula