crease the difference between this expense and the
price of produce.

The operation of the three first causes in lowering the expenses of
cultivation, compared with the price of produce, are quite obvious; the
fourth requires a few further observations.

If a great and continued demand should arise among surrounding nations
for the raw produce of a particular country, the price of this produce
would of course rise considerably; and the expenses of cultivation,
rising only slowly and gradually to the same proportion, the price
of produce might for a long time keep so much ahead, as to give a
prodigious stimulus to improvement, and encourage the employment of much
capital in bringing fresh land under cultivation, and rendering the old
much more productive.

Nor would the effect be essentially different in a country which
continued to feed its own people, if instead of a demand for its raw
produce, there was the same increasing demand for its manufactures.
These manufactures, if from such a demand the value of their amount
in foreign countries was greatly to increase, would bring back a great
increase of value in return, which increase of value could not fail to
increase the value of the raw produce. The demand for agricultural as
well as manufactured produce would be augmented; and a considerable
stimulus, though not perhaps to the same extent as in the last case,
would be given to every kind of improvement on the land.

A similar effect would be produced by the introduction of new machinery,
and a more judicious division of labour in manufactures. It almost
always happens in this case, not only that the quantity of manufactures
is very greatly increased, but that the value of the whole mass is
augmented, from the great extension of the demand for them, occasioned
by their cheapness. We see, in consequence, that in all rich
manufacturing and commercial countries, the value of manufactured and
commercial products bears a very high proportion to the raw products;
[10] whereas, in comparatively poor countries, without much internal
trade and foreign commerce, the value of their raw produce constitutes
almost the whole of their wealth. If we suppose the wages of labour
so to rise with the rise of produce, as to give the labourer the same
command of the means of subsistence as before, yet if he is able to
purchase a greater quantity of other necessaries and conveniencies, both
foreign and domestic, with the price of a give