TUK WKA I.TH OF NATIONS.

159

the quantity produced by tlieacre of wheat. An acre of po-tatoes is cultivated with less expense than an acre of wheat;the fallow, which generally precedes the sowing of wheat,more than compensating the hoeing and other extraordinaryculture which is always given to potatoes. Should this rootever become in any part of Europe , like rice in some ricecountries, the common and favourite vegetable food of thepeople, so as to occupy the same proportion of the lands intillage which wheat and other sorts of grain for human fooddo at present, the same quantity of cultivated land wouldmaintain a much greater number of people, and the labourersbeing generally fed with potatoes, a greater surplus woidd re-main after replacing all the stock, and maintaining all the la-bour employed in cultivation. A greater share of this surplustoo would belong to the landlord. Population would increase,and rents would rise much beyond what they are at present.

The land which is fit for potatoes, is lit for almost everyother useful vegetable. If they occupied the same proportionof cultivated land which com does at present, they would re-gulate, in the same manner, the rent of the greater part ofother cultivated land.

In some parts of Lancashire , it is pretended, I have beentold, that bread of oatmeal is a heartier food for labouring-people than wheaten bread, and I have frequently heard thesame doctrine held in Scotland . I am, however, somewhatdoubtful of the truth of it. The common people in Scotland ,who are fed with oatmeal, are in general neither so strongnor so handsome as the same rank of people in England, whoare fed with wheaten bread. They neither work so well, norlook so well; and as there is not the same difference betweenthe people of fashion in the two countries, experience wouldseem to shew, that the food of the common people in Scotland is not so suitable to the human constitution as that of theirneighbours of the same rank in England. But it seems to beotherwise with potatoes. The chairmen, porters, and coal-heavers in London , and those unfortunate women who liveby prostitution, the strongest men and the most beautifulwomen, perhaps, in the British dominions, are said to be, thegreater part of them, from tlielowest rank of people in Ireland ,who are generally fed with this root. No food can afford amore decisive proof of its nourishing quality, or of its beingpeculiarly suitable to the health of the human constitution.

It is difficult to preserve potatoes through the year, and im-