tion is corn exempted? Does not that also vary, on one hand, from
improvements in agriculture, from improved machinery and implements
used in husbandry, as well as from the discovery of new tracts of
fertile land, which in other countries may be taken into cultivation,
and which will affect the value of corn in every market where
importation is free? Is it not on the other hand subject to be enhanced
in value from prohibitions of importation, from increasing population
and wealth, and the greater difficulty of obtaining the increased
supplies, on account of the additional quantity of labour which the
cultivation of inferior lands requires? Is not the value of labour
equally variable; being not only affected, as all other things are, by
the proportion between the supply and demand, which uniformly varies
with every change in the condition of the community, but also by the
varying price of food and other necessaries, on which the wages of
labour are expended?

In the same country double the quantity of labour may be required to
produce a given quantity of food and necessaries at one time, that may
be necessary at another, and a distant time; yet the labourer's reward
may possibly be very little diminished. If the labourer's wages at the
former period, were a certain quantity of food and necessaries, he
probably could not have subsisted if that quantity had been reduced.
Food and necessaries in this case will have risen 100 per cent. if
estimated by the _quantity_ of labour necessary to their production,
while they will scarcely have increased in value, if measured by the
quantity of labour for which they will _exchange_.

The same remark may be made respecting two or more countries. In America
and Poland, a year's labour will produce much more corn than in England.
Now, supposing all other necessaries to be equally cheap in those three
countries, would it not be a great mistake to conclude, that the
quantity of corn awarded to the labourer, would in each country be in
proportion to the facility of production?

If the shoes and clothing of the labourer, could, by improvements in
machinery, be produced by one fourth of the labour now necessary to
their production, they would probably fall 75 per cent.; but so far is
it from being true, that the labourer would thereby be enabled
permanently to consume four coats, or four pair of shoes, instead of
one, that his wages would in no long time be adjusted by the effects of
comp