overty, the
advancing, stationary, or declining state of the society. Such
revolutions in the public welfare, though they affect the general rates
both of wages and profit, must in the end affect them equally in all
different employments. The proportion between them therefore must remain
the same, and cannot well be altered, at least for any considerable
time, by any such revolutions."[4]

It will be seen by the extract which I have made in page 4, from the
"Wealth of Nations," that though Adam Smith fully recognized the
principle, that the proportion between the quantities of labour
necessary for acquiring different objects, is the only circumstance
which can afford any rule for our exchanging them for one another, yet
he limits its application to "that early and rude state of society,
which precedes both the accumulation of stock and the appropriation of
land;" as if, when profits and rent were to be paid, they would have
some influence on the relative value of commodities, independent of the
mere quantity of labour that was necessary to their production.

Adam Smith, however, has no where analyzed the effects of the
accumulation of capital, and the appropriation of land, on relative
value. It is of importance, therefore, to determine how far the effects
which are avowedly produced on the exchangeable value of commodities, by
the comparative quantity of labour bestowed on their production, are
modified or altered by the accumulation of capital and the payment of
rent.

First, as to the accumulation of capital. Even in that early state to
which Adam Smith refers, some capital, though possibly made and
accumulated by the hunter himself would be necessary to enable him to
kill his game. Without some weapon, neither the beaver nor the deer
could be destroyed, and therefore the value of these animals would be
regulated, not solely by the time and labour necessary to their
destruction, but also by the time and labour necessary for providing the
hunter's capital, the weapon, by the aid of which their destruction was
effected.

Suppose the weapon necessary to kill the beaver, were constructed with
much more labour than that necessary to kill the deer, on account of the
greater difficulty of approaching near to the former animal, and the
consequent necessity of its being more true to its mark; one beaver
would naturally be of more value than two deer, and precisely for this
reason, that more labour would on the whole be n