But if, instead of the reduced numbers at present left in this false position, the hundreds of thousands who have emigrated had remained at home to breed and stagnate on the overburdened soil, is it not evident that a state of things would now exist in Ireland such as no man can think of without a shudder? I do not wish, however, to imply that the existing surplus of agricultural labour, need necessarily follow their example. When once the rate of wages in a country has reached a point, which ensures to the labourer the necessaries and decencies of life, emigration ceases to be of such
mouths require as much food as the old ones, and the hands do not produce as much. If all instruments of production were held in joint property by the whole people, and the produce divided with perfect equality among them, and if in a society thus constituted, industry were as energetic and the produce as ample as at present, there would be enough to make all the existing population extremely comfortable but when that population had doubled itself, as, with the existing habits of the people, under such an encouragement, it undoubtedly would in little more than twenty years, what would then be their condition? Unless the arts of production were in the same time improved in an almost unexampled degree, the inferior soils which must be resorted to, and the more laborious and scantily remunerative cultivation which must be employed on the superior soils, to procure food for so much larger a population, would, by an insuperable necessity, render every individual in the community poorer than before. If the population continued to increase at the same rate, a time would soon arrive when no one would have more than mere necessaries, and, soon after, a time when no one would have a sufficiency of those, and the further increase of population would be arrested by death."—Ibid. Vol. I. p. 238.
