"Many persons, also, perplexed by the consideration that all the
commodities which are exported as remittances of the absentee's
income are exports for which no return is obtained; that they are as
much lost to this country as if they were a tribute paid to a foreign
state, or even as if they were periodically thrown into the sea. This
is unquestionably true; but it must be recollected that whatever is
unproductively consumed, is, by the very terms of the proposition,
destroyed, without producing any return"--_Senior's Political
Economy_, 160.

This view is, as the reader will see, based upon the idea of the total
destruction of the commodities consumed. Were it even correct, it
would still follow that there had been transferred from Ireland to
England a demand for services of a thousand kinds, tending to cause a
rise in the price of labour in the one and a fall in the other;--but
if it were altogether incorrect, it would then follow, necessarily,
that the loss to the country _would_ be as great as if the remittances
were "a tribute paid to a foreign state, or even as if they were
periodically thrown into the sea." That it is altogether incorrect the
reader may readily satisfy himself. Man consumes much, but he destroys
nothing. In eating food he is merely acting as a machine for preparing
the elements of which it is composed for future production; and the
more he can take out of the land the more he can return to it, and the
more rapid will be the improvement in the productive power of the
soil. If the market be at hand, he can take hundreds of bushels of
turnips, carrots, or potatoes, or tons of hay, from an acre of land,
and he can vary the character of his culture from year to year, and
the more he borrows from the great bank the more he can repay to it,
the more he can improve his mind and his cultivation, and the more
readily he can exchange for improved machinery by aid of which to