Note 263-9 — Chapter III

The Beccaria, Economia publica I, 3, 31, teaches that the limits of population are to be found at the point where agriculture cannot be made to yield an additional increase of products, and where foreign countries do not offer any more a counter value of their products in exchange for the manufactured articles and the services to be furnished them. Similarly, Büsch, Geldumlauf III, 7; otherwise, indeed, V, 15, in which, in opposition to Adam Smith, it is claimed that the work to be performed by one nation for others has no limits which cannot be exceeded. Steuart's theory of the limits to the production of every commercial nation: Principles, I, ch. 18. Lauderdale, Inquiry, ch. 5, 274 ff., says categorically, that all wealth which is produced by the transformation of raw material depends on the production of such raw material, and of the means of subsistence necessary for the support of the labor employed in such transformation. Excellent investigations by Malthus in the additions (1817) to the Essay on the Principles of Population, II, ch. 9-13. Compare Roscher Nationalöcon. des Ackerbaues, § 162. As early a writer as Mirabeau, Philosophie rurale, ch. X, was of opinion that a country whose industries were on as large a scale as those of Holland, dispersed its people indeed over the whole earth, made them independent at home, but almost destroyed their nationality.