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38 ECONOMIC INQUIRIES AND STUDIES
and possibly a reversal of the present tendency for
rents to fall. Such changes may hardly be apparent
for a few years, with the exception, perhaps, of the
diversion of the stream of emigration to the north-
west of Canada, which has begun j but it seems hardly
possible to doubt that they must begin to be felt before
very long-perhaps in the course of ten, and almost
certainly in the course of twenty years. 1
f
To sum up this long review. These easy figures of
population evidently go to the heart of much of our
politics and political economy. To quote only the
illustrations I have given, we may say, first, they give
some idea of the mass of the European populations
in the world, and consequently of the overwhelming
strength of European civilization. Next, as we have
. seen, they help to explain the existence of five leading
powers in Europe, and the changes in the balance of
power which have occurred in the last fifty or sixty
years. They equally help to explain domestic changes
in each country, such as the diminished intensity of the
Irish difficulty in the U ntted Kingdom, or the growth
of social difficulties in a country like Russia through
the population increasing with no other opening but a
restricted agriculture, or such external difficulties as
we have brought on ourselves by the conquest of India
and the Roman peace we have established. Finally,
they set before us in a clear light the great economic
phenomenon of our time, the creation of the V nited
States of America, and the provision by this and
similar agencies for a growth of population, not only
in the United States, but in Europe, which is entirely
without precedent. I have endeavoured to supplement
the last figures with a few others designed to throw light
on the question of the continuance of this portentous

1 As a matter of fact the second and third of these consequences
have followed very much as stated in the text, while the first-the
influx of population into the Canadian north-west-is now (1903)
attracting no small attention.