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126 ECONOMIC INQUIRIES AND STUDIES
discussing the question, notwithstanding that it has
virtually been disposed of, as far as any explanation of
past facts is concerned, by what has been already said.
The argument proceeds on the supposition-which
is no doubt well founded in the abstract and as far as
the past experience of mankind is concerned-that in
addition to natural capacities of its own a community
requires for its prosperity certain natural advantages,
fertility of soil, rich and easily worked mines, a genial
climate in which labour may conveniently be carried on,
and so forth. A community possessing all these things,
or the like things, will flourish, but as it ceases to lose
any of them its prosperity must become precarious, and
population must flow to the places where they can be
secured. Of course climate is not a thing which changes,
as far as any practical experience is concerned; but re-
latively the advantage of a fertile soil may be lost, as
England has lately lost it in comparison with the
United States and other new countries, its soil having
become inadequate for the whole population; and still
more the advantage of mines, especially mines of coal
and iron, on which the miscellaneous industries of a
manufacturing country depend, may be lost. Hence if
is said the check to our rate of growth in recent years.
We have long since lost our agricultural advantages
by comparison. Now we are also beginning to lose the
special advantages which coal and iron have given.
Our mines are becoming less rich than those of foreign
countries, and the balance is turning against us. Why
should not population relatively flow from England to
the United States and other countries as it has passed
within the limits of the United Kingdom itself from
Cornwall and Sussex to Staffordshire, Lancashire,
Yorkshire, and the north? In this view the coal famine
of 1873 was the sign of a check such as Mr. J evons
anticipated. What has happened since is only a sequence
of the like causes.
I need not. repeat in opposition to this view what has
already been said as to the inadequacy of any actual