In every manufacturing or commercial country, wealth displays itself in general opulence amongst the lower orders, and the means of supplying that greater consumption is the same as it was in Rome.  The money that arrives from other countries enables the community to purchase from other countries the deficiency of provisions, and prevents the evil effects from being felt at the moment.

When, in course of time, there comes to be a difficulty of obtaining the supply, from the want of produce in the country itself, then the decline begins; and as no wealth, arising either from conquest, colonies, or commerce, bears any great proportion to the daily food of a people, its effect is soon felt in a very ruinous and terrible manner.

England is the greatest country for extensive commerce that ever existed, yet the amount of the whole of its foreign trade would not do much more than furnish the people with bread, and certainly not with all the simple necessaries of life.  If, therefore, a country, such as this is, were unable to furnish itself with the necessaries of life, the whole balance of trade, now in its favour, would not be sufficient to supply any considerable deficiency.

The desire of eating animal food, in place of vegetables, is very general and, amongst a people living by manufactures, will always be indulged.  If the country was fully peopled, before animal food was so much used; that is, if the population was as great as the vegetable produce of the country was able to supply; as the same quantity of ground cannot feed the same number of people with animal food, there will be a necessity of importing the deficiency.

The change that this produces, when once it begins to operate, is a most powerful and effectual cause of decline; and, without the intervention of conquest, or any violent revolution, would of itself be sufficient to impoverish, in the first instance, and, in the second, to depopulate a country.

We find every country that was once wealthy, but that has fallen [end of page #138] into decline, is thinly peopled; and if it were not for the want of information, from which the cause may be traced, a deficiency of food might most probably be found to be one of the most efficient.

Flanders, which is one of the most fertile countries in Europe, and has experienced a partial decline, is probably not near so fully peopled as it once was.  Its present population would not support those armies, or give it that rank amongst nations which it at one time maintained.  It is true there have been persecutions and emigrations, which must have reduced the population of the country for a time, but not to an extent that would account for such a diminution in its numbers, as there is reason to think has taken place.

Ghent, a town of an amazing size, could, at one time, send out fifty thousand fighting men.  It certainly could not now (that is to say, at the time the French subdued the country) have furnished one-fourth part of the number.  Ghent is not the only town in this situation, the others have all fallen off in the same manner.  When manufactures declined, the people did not go to live in the country, for that also is thinly inhabited, the richness of the soil being taken into consideration.