ely fixed and constant. It
varies at different times in the same country, and very materially
differs in different countries. It essentially depends on the habits and
customs of the people. An English labourer would consider his wages
under their natural rate, and too scanty to support a family, if they
enabled him to purchase no other food than potatoes, and to live in no
better habitation than a mud cabin; yet these moderate demands of nature
are often deemed sufficient in countries where "man's life is cheap,"
and his wants easily satisfied. Many of the conveniences now enjoyed in
an English cottage, would have been thought luxuries at an early period
of our history.

From manufactured commodities always falling, and raw produce always
rising, with the progress of society, such a disproportion in their
relative value is at length created, that in rich countries a labourer,
by the sacrifice of a very small quantity only of his food, is able to
provide liberally for all his other wants.

Independently of the variations in the value of money, which necessarily
affect wages, but which we have here supposed to have no operation, as
we have considered money to be uniformly of the same value, wages are
subject to a rise or fall from two causes:

1st. The supply and demand of labourers.

2dly. The price of the commodities on which the wages of
labour are expended.

In different stages of society, the accumulation of capital, or of the
means of employing labour, is more or less rapid, and must in all cases
depend on the productive powers of labour. The productive powers of
labour are generally greatest when there is an abundance of fertile
land: at such periods accumulation is often so rapid, that labourers
cannot be supplied with the same rapidity as capital.

It has been calculated, that under favourable circumstances population
may be doubled in twenty-five years; but under the same favourable
circumstances, the whole capital of a country might possibly be doubled
in a shorter period. In that case, wages during the whole period would
have a tendency to rise, because the demand for labour would increase
still faster than the supply.

In new settlements, where the arts and knowledge of countries far
advanced in refinement are introduced, it is probable that capital has a
tendency to increase faster than mankind: and if the deficiency of
labourers were not supplied by more populous countries, this tendency
wo