earth shall never perish for want of gratifying aliment, whatever Most of the animal and vegetable genera be their numbers. have been and are in use by some people, for this purpose, and both nourish and please them.

As far, then, as the question of our sustenance rests between man and his Creator, there is a most diversified and abundant provision made for him, which will never fail for his support through all his generations, let them spread as they may, as long as herbs and trees can grow, or animals exist in addition to all the corn and cattle that can be reared.

It is, therefore, contrary to reason and fact to imagine that our population will in any age of the world be starved. The maintaining bounties of Providence will always be exuberantly on the earth, ever ready to be converted or applied to all that require them. Our Creator raises them in or upon the surface for the benefit of all. But, having done that, he leaves it to mankind to avail themselves of his provision, and to circulate and distribute it to each other, so that every one may have what he needs. This is an affair entirely between man and man. There is always plenty on the earth for all, however much any may be destitute of it. It is the purpose of the Almighty that human care, industry, skill, and judgment, and human virtue and benevolence, should be the agencies and instruments to cause every one to partake of what he is always amply giving. That any want when there is enough in society from its great Author for all, evinces that our legislative provisions, and our civil and social arrangements and course of things are yet defective or insufficient for the general welfare. That any one should, like Mr. Hazlitt, be two days without food, in a metropolis abounding in plenty (and in all nations there are thousands at times, if not always, in that state), is a circumstance which announces, not that we are overpeopled or that nature is inadequate, but that human wisdom and benevolence have still to devise the means of ensuring to all the subsistence and necessaries which they want. It is man, not the Deity, who has to think and act rightly on this subject, and thereby to remedy this great social evil.*

"William Hazlitt, a few months before his death, met Hone in the street, who inquired after his health and circumstances. Both were bad. He answered, 'You are aware of some of my difficulties, but no human being knows all. Can you lend me a shilling? I have been without food these two days!"-Monthly Mag., March, 1833, p. 258.

LETTER XXXIII.

Animal and Vegetable Matter, in any Form, capable of nourishing Human Life. Four Sources of it.-Three that will last as long as Man.-Probability that the Improvements yet attainable in Cultivation will always suffice.-The Benefit of small Allotments and Spade Husbandry under wise Regulations.

MY DEAR SON,

A few more observations and circumstances will complete our review of the plans and purposes of the Deity in his established system and provisions for our subsistence. We see that he has designed that our bodies should be nourished, their moving particles be supplied, their structure continued, their living principle be refreshed, and its union with them be maintained, as long as the association is to continue, by animal and vegetable matter, and by the ethereal agencies which accompany it. This matter always consists of some of those elementary particles of which the earth itself is compounded, and chiefly of the four great principles which seem to be the basis of most-oxygen, hydrogen, azote, and carbon. But, in order to become serviceable in the offices of nutrition to us, these material elements must undergo the action of the living functions of organic life, and by them, in their organizations, be elaborated or prepared into that state and into those combinations which give to them their alimentary efficacy upon us. One form of animal or vegetable organization would have been sufficient to make that elaboration of the material elements which would be nutritive to us; but, instead of confining his supply to any single mode, we find that our Creator has chosen to place and arrange it in thousands of diversified forms, which his Divine imagination has invented. It is of no importance to its sustaining effect from what figures or compositions of it the nutritive matter is passed into our stomach. Our mastication destroys all forms. Our teeth have been devised to break and comminute them into small fragments, and the digestive process dissolves every kind into smaller and finer molecules. But he has chosen to please our eye, and produce to us both intellectual pleasure

and improvement, by shaping the materials of our food into those innumerable forms and appearances of beauty and interestingness which the several species of the two organic kingdoms of nature are everywhere presenting to us. This was not at all necessary to our nutrition. That depends on the material particles of which the plant or animal consists, and not on its figure or colour. Azote is the peculiar and predominating principle of all animalized matter, as carbon is of all vegetable compositions. By either, or by both, in the elaborated state in which we receive them, in their organized arrangement, we are nourished, and our present life is continued; but, as all vegetables contain the one, and all animais the other, and all shapes of either are destroyed in our mouth and dissolved in our stomach, it is quite the same as to their nutritious operation from what figures of either we receive it. The bird, the quadruped, the fish, the insect, the serpent, eel, and other animal forms, alike present to us the animal matter that will benefit us, as every species of eatable plant brings also the vegetable element we can live upon. All forms of them being equally nutritious, it is really indifferent to our subsisting life from what organized figure they come. To which we shall addict ourselves in preference to others, has always been, and always will be, as far as we can yet foresee, a subject of national habit and individual taste. These are everywhere varying. None servilely copy others. Each country has subsided into customs in this respect satisfactory to its inhabitants; and each seems to prefer, in inclination, such as it has adopted, and to adhere to its own articles and mode of diet from actual liking and deliberate choice.

The true view of philosophy, therefore, seems to be, to regard all the animal and all the vegetable kingdom as two great magazines of nutritious matter, provided by our Creator for our subsistence, and set before us, in all parts of the world, for our use and gratification. We prefer the corn plants, and culinary vegetables, and our domesticated herds, and flocks, and poultry, and selected game, for our daily food, and leave the rest of the existing fund of animal and vegetable matter, generally, untouched and disregarded; and we are right to do so as long as these will suffice us; but when we are speculating on the question whether human nature can be continued on earth, unless its population be checked or diminished, it is

right that we should remember all the sources of subsistence which will be always at the command of our multiplying posterity.

The facts of the last few preceding letters prove to you that there are, and will always be, four distinct processes and sources of nutritive matter to us, of which every generation may avail themselves: the cultivable ground of our surface, the increasing produce we may raise from this, the other vegetable matter which is convertible into palatable and nutritious food, with the great body of animals in nature, not now used by us, to which others may resort; and the possibility that future science may discover the means of imitating the operations of organic life on the material elements, and of elaborating them into a nutritious form by human chymistry, as nature is now daily doing by her vegetable and animal economies.

Of these four sources of supply the first three are certainare before us-are always in our power; the last is only, at present, a conjectural possibility; but it is at least as probable to occur as it is that there ever can be on earth that multiplication of our numbers which will make it necessary as a last resort. I think we need not doubt that our surface and its cultivated produce can be hereafter made to supply all the food that any numbers which may arise will require.* But if any choose to extend their imaginations or their apprehensions beyond the vast amount of human beings which these two sources can be made to supply, then, as long as any forests remain, or new ones, or any other vegetable besides the corn plants can grow, or any species of animals are in being, the marvellous numbers of human kind that are supposed capable of coming will here find supporting and sufficient nutriment. Our forests, and the new plantations that will ever be succeeding what may be cut down for use, will be at least as inexhaustible as our coals. Wood convertible into bread, and coals usable as fuel, may be expected to last as long as human nature will be on this earth, though it is one of the most improb

Many facts show how land hitherto uncultivated, or of a very inferior kind, may be made to yield great quantities of useful food. "In 1835," I read," part of the sandy soil of Bagshot-heath, one of the most barren parts of the kingdom, has, last year, yielded at the rate of ten bushels of potatoes an acre, and has now a luxuriant crop of cattle-cabbage, of not less than forty tons to an acre, growing on it."-New Monthly Mag., 1835, p. 415.

able of all possibilities that mankind should ever be called upon to make loaves of their trees, or puddings or porridge of their grass and straw. But it will be rational to contrast the one improbability with the other. That there is plenty of land untilled on our surface to cultivate, a former letter stated. This may be made highly productive.* No fact can be more certain than this. It is not less obvious to the enlightened observer, that, even where land is in husbandry, it is not so cultivated as to yield the quantity of produce which, if duly managed, it would now supply. This is declared to be the case even in England,† and still more manifestly in Wales, notwithstanding all the demands which have been made upon it.‡ The same complaints have been made as to parts of Scotland.§ If our improved island be still in such a defective state that its present produce could be easily doubled, we need not wonder that every other country is now growing so much less than it could do, even from the ground which is in culture.||

*The Rev. H. Berry, in 1833, thus stated the improvements of Mr. Coke, who has been one of the greatest of the agricultural benefactors of his age: "Mr. Coke's estate, round Holkham, consists principally of sandy loam, or light gravel of the same character, with occasional, but not frequent, patches of bog. The bog was covered with low alder-bushes and sedges, which seldom failed to hold a fox. They are now, by his skilful application of capital, highly productive water-meadow. When he first came to Holkham, an estate that was tithe-free let for eighteen pence an acre; subsequently at three shillings, and was left by the tenant because he would not pay five shillings an acre. Now let all despondency cease as to the capability of our poor soils to produce food, and be property, under a system of judicious management. From this estate Mr. Coke has, by his superior management, obtained 79 bushels of barley per acre; and on the same land, and also on land of a similar quality, his crop of WHEAT produced rather more than 34 bushels an acre. This was obtained from land decidedly not wheat-land, but it shows what cultivation will achieve."-New Farmers' Journal, 13th November, 1833.

† We have been assured by the highest practical authority, that were England in general as well cultivated as Northumberland and Lincoln, it would produce more than double the quantity that is now obtained from it with a less proportionate outlay."-Edin. Review, No. 120, p. 391.

Messrs. Kennedy and Grainger, in their "Observations on the Present State of Tenancy in England," remark: "Nor does Wales, in general, produce half what it is capable of doing under proper management. But whatever requires a little trouble above the natural productions of the land is thought quite unnecessary, and is totally neglected."

"In some of the northwest districts of Scotland, where it is not customary to grant leases, agriculture is worse than in Wales."-Edin. Review, No. 120, p. 397.

In 1833, Mr. Colgate, of Chevening, described how he had once ob