19 Dec.r 1801

Maximum

Ulteriora

Magazines necessity of

{4}

4

It is necessary /true/ to cast off prejudices /antipathies and panics/ of all

sorts, and look difficulties in the face. Subsistence must remain for ever

precarious, or magazines must be established. Wheat with the inferior grains

rather than […?]-rice {I should suppose} from Hindostan would stand clearest of

objection. The objections that have been urged against magazines are strong,

perhaps conclusive. But they all turn upon a state of things in which we have

ceased /out of which we have emerged/, and in which nothing but some unexampled

calamity can replace us. They turn upon a /an habitual/ sufficiency either

actual or possible, of the average stock of grain for the stock of /subsistence

of/ inhabitants. With us, barring calamity as above or emigration to an

unexampled and improbable amount, the very possibility of such a sufficiency is

gone for ever. Population has already outstripped culture. Population having no

limit, so long as food is to be had from abroad in exchange for wealth – that

culture should ever again keep pace with it /it should ever be overtaken by

culture/ seems altogether improbable, that it should long continue so to do is,

unless contiguous land were to arise out of the sea, impossible.