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14 ECONOMIC INQUIRIES AND STUDIES
the point. The kind 'of agriculture possible in any
country is related to the existing capacity of the popu-
lation, or to such improvements in that capacity as are
in progress, and with the Russian population as it is,
there are certainly traces in Russia of an increasing
severity in the struggle for existence, which may at any
moment become most serious. The change in the con-
ditions of expansion for the population internally as
compared with what they were fifty years ago ought at
any rate to be recognized at the present day, sug~ested
as they are by the most obvious statistics of Russian
population. Italy, it may also be noticed, is fast in-
creasing its population without any increase of new soil
or corresponding increase of manufactures.
Last of all, another fact presented by these obvious
figures is the dependence of the population of the
United Kingdom very largely, and to a less degree of
France, Germany, Belgium, and Holland, on the im-
portations of food from abroad. The facts as to the
United Kingdom have been much discussed in all their
bearings lately, Mr. Bourne, as we know well; having
taken a large part in the discussions; but you have
only to turn to the pages of the" Statistical Abstract
for Foreign Countries," to perceive that the United
Kingdom is not quite isolated in the matter. It is much
more dependent in degree than any other European
country, but in the fact of dependence it is not alto-
gether singular .. The fact is, of course, partly due to
the increase of population in far greater ratio than the
increase of agricultural production, the prediction of
Malthus, that the population of England would not be
supported on the soil of England if it increased at any-
thing like the rate in his time, having thus been verified,
though not exactly as he anticipated; but it is also
partly due to an increase in the consuming power of
the same populatiori, and the larger consumption of
more expensive kinds of food, requiring larger propor-
tionate areas to produce them. France, with a stationary
population, increases its imports of food, and the in-