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.
This is replaced, in the third edition, by these sentences:—
With a population pressing against the means of subsistence, the only remedies are either a reduction of people, or a more rapid accumulation of capital. In rich countries, where all the fertile land is already cultivated, the latter remedy is neither very practicable nor very desirable, because its effects would be, if pushed very far, to render all classes equally poor. But in poor countries, where there are abundant means of production in store, from fertile land not yet brought into cultivation, it is the only safe and effacious means of removing the evil, particularly as its effect would be to elevate all classes of the people.
The friends of humanity cannot but wish that in all countries the labouring classes should have a taste for comforts and enjoyments, and that they should be stimulated by all legal means in their exertions to procure them. There cannot be a better security against a superabundant population.
And then, in all editions, the argument thus runs on:—
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.[1]
The passage quoted by Professor Marshall is that beginning with 'The friends of humanity,' and ending with 'the evils of famine.' But, on comparing the two texts, though it will be recognised that it is just possible that in the later Ricardo may have intended to soften his teaching, and have thrust in a sentence without any regard to the argument of the page, it would seem much more probable that the later version is only another way of stating the earlier. He had been distinguishing between 'rich' and 'poor' countries: for the latter, but not for the former, the remedy for distress is to induce the people to be more industrious. In the first edition he had cited as examples
↑First edition, pp. 99-102; usual edition, pp. 55-54.
