第627页 / 共2651页

By diminishing the number of those small occupiers, therefore,

the quantity of this sort of provisions, which is thus produced

at little or no expense, must certainly have been a good deal

diminished, and their price must consequently have been raised

both sooner and faster than it would otherwise have risen. Sooner

or later, however, in the progress of improvement, it must at any

rate have risen to the utmost height to which it is capable of

rising; or to the price which pays the labour and expense of

cultivating the land which furnishes them with food, as well as

these are paid upon the greater part of other cultivated land.