chap. xxi. INCREASE OF WEALTH. 135

value which they may cause in other commodities,amount to a hundredth part of the wealth of acountry, and in a prosperous state they will beara much less proportion. The possession of themis real wealth only in a small degree, thoughevery addition to them produces real wealth bythe stimulus which the apparent advance of pricesgives to every kind of industrious exertion.

It is impossible to collect any accurate ideas ofthe proportionate increase of commodities in ge-neral. An approximation only to accuracy can beexpected, and that with faint hopes of success.

Between the reign of Elizabeth, which termi-nated near the end of the sixteenth century, andthat of William, which ended nearly one hundredyears later, there had been an increase in popu-lation in England as well as in the other countriesof Europe. The inhabitants of England and Wales are calculated by Mr. Rickman to have been inthe year 1700 about five million four hundred andseventy-five thousand, and to have increased inthe course of the following century at the rate ofseventy per cent. As we have found, by the twocensuses taken since that of 1801 , that our popu-lation has increased at a greater rate than in thelast century, so it seems natural to calculate thatit had increased more rapidly in the seventeenththan in the sixteenth. We therefore assume alower rate, and, estimating the population in theyear 1500 at three million eight hundred thou-