If the rich were to subscribe and give five shillings a day to five hundred thousand men without retrenching their own tables, no doubt can exist, that as these men would naturally live more at their ease and consume a greater quantity of provisions, there would be less food remaining to divide among the rest, and consequently each man's patent would be diminished in value or the same number of pieces of silver would purchase a smaller quantity of subsistence.
An increase of population without a proportional increase of food will evidently have the same effect in lowering the value of each man's patent.

The food must necessarily be distributed in smaller quantities, and consequently a day's labour will purchase a smaller quantity of provisions.

An increase in the price of provisions would arise either from an increase of population faster than the means of subsistence, or from a different distribution of the money of the society.

The food of a country that has been long occupied, if it be increasing, increases slowly and regularly and cannot be made to answer any sudden demands, but variations in the distribution of the money of a society are not infrequently occurring, and are undoubtedly among the causes that occasion the continual variations which we observe in the price of provisions.
The poor laws of England tend to depress the general condition of the poor in these two ways.

Their first obvious tendency is to increase population without increasing the food for its support.