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If, in the progress of improvement, therefore, the real price of

one species of food necessarily rises, that of another as

necessarily falls; and it becomes a matter of more nicety to

judge how far the rise in the one may be compensated by the fall

in the other. When the real price of butcher's meat has once got

to its height (which, with regard to every sort, except perhaps

that of hogs flesh, it seems to have done through a great part of

England more than a century ago), any rise which can afterwards

happen in that of any other sort of animal food, cannot much

affect the circumstances of the inferior ranks of people. The

circumstances of the poor, through a great part of England,

cannot surely be so much distressed by any rise in the price of

poultry, fish, wild-fowl, or venison, as they must be relieved by

the fall in that of potatoes.