A Manual of Political Economy Author:Thomas Cooper Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: These seem to me the equitable terms o- which rent ought to be settled. As to the class of reasoners who inveigh against the monopoly of land, and contend tha... more »t when a land owner dies, his land ought to revert ts the public and become common sto it would prove such a decided obstacle to industry and improvement; it would so surely take away from an improver every motive that he now has to improve, that I believe it will be long before society can be brought to sanction this theory of idleness and deterioration.] Of Population. Life cannot be supported without food, raiment, and shelter. These are procured chiefly by tilling the ground and causing such vegetables to grow as are fit for human sustenance. A man may indeed subsist by fishing or hunting1, but this has been found too precarious to be eligible. We must rely upon agriculture for food, even for animal food. The fertility of soil may be greatly increased by judicious culture and the use of manures. A field that in its natural state produces but 15 bushels of wheat, may be made to produce 40. Beyond this produce on a farm of 300 or 400 acres, no skill or effort has succeeded hi producing more. Under particular circumstances, 50 or 52 bushels have been produced; but never twice on the game land. The fertility o the earth has a limit, beyond which no agricultural skill can make it pass. Whether we have arrived as yet at this utmost limit, no one can tell; but every one will agree, that land which produces 40 bushels this year, cannot be made to produce 80 bushels ten years hence, and 160 bushels ten years afterwards, and so on indefinitely. All experience, and .all probable expectation, is in favor of an early limit to the fertility of soil But when a man and woman marry and have plenty of food, they may produ...« less