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THE UTILITY OF COMMON STATISTICS 15
:reased consumption per head among our own popula-
ion of the quantity of such articles as sugar and tea
Llso suggests that articles of home agricultural produc-
ion are now consumed more largely than they were
wenty years ago or more by the same numbers. To
:hese two causes combined then, the increase of popula-
:ion and increase of consuming power per head, coupled
with a comparatively stationary agriculture, Europe
)wes the unique phenomenon oflarge masses of popula-
;ion s41Pported by imports from foreign and distant
:ountnes. The social and political consequences of this
lew fact must be manifold, and again it is to the common
5gures of statistics we owe our knowledge of it. This
~reat fact would hardly be known at all if periodic
::ensuses and the system of recording imports and ex-
ports had not previously been introduced.
SociaIJy and politically perhaps the phenomenon is
not yet sufficiently appreciated, and as compared with
what it will be, it is probably only beginning to be im-
portant, but it is one which must before long play an
important part in international politics and in the
economic life of nations. Both the countries which
grow the surplus food and the countries which receive
it are profoundly concerned.

In another way the internal growth of population in
different countries of Europe is also connected with
great political changes. I n Germany, for i~stance, it
was partly the special growth of the population under
the Prussian monarchy which assisted to make United
Germany. In Russia, again. the great growth of
population outside Poland has, from year to year, and
decade to decade, dwarfed the Polish difficulty as a bare
question of the balance of power in Russia. But we
have even a more striking case of political change from
the internal changes of population nearer home. Every
one must have been struck, during the last few years,
by the calmness of the country generally in presence
of Irish agitation, and the evident hopelessness of any