een employed on
its production. Whether, after this has taken place, corn shall again
fall to its former price, or shall continue permanently higher, will
depend on the quality of the land from which the increased quantity of
corn has been supplied. If it be obtained from land of the same
fertility, as that which was last in cultivation, and with no greater
cost of labour, the price will fall to its former state; if from poorer
land, it will continue permanently higher. The high wages in the first
instance proceeded from an increase in the demand for labour: inasmuch
as it encouraged marriage, and supported children, it produced the
effect of increasing the supply of labour. But when the supply is
obtained, wages will again fall to their former price, if corn has
fallen to its former price: to a higher than the former price, if the
increased supply of corn has been produced from land of an inferior
quality. A high price is by no means incompatible with an abundant
supply: the price is permanently high, not because the quantity is
deficient, but because there has been an increased cost in producing it.
It generally happens indeed, that when a stimulus has been given to
population, an effect is produced beyond what the case requires; the
population may be, and generally is so much increased as,
notwithstanding the increased demand for labour, to bear a greater
proportion to the funds for maintaining labourers than before the
increase of capital. In this case a re-action will take place, wages
will be below their natural level, and will continue so, till the usual
proportion between the supply and demand has been restored. In this case
then, the rise in the price of corn is preceded by a rise of wages, and
therefore entails no distress on the labourer.

A fall in the value of money, in consequence of an influx of the
precious metals from the mines, or from the abuse of the privileges of
banking, is another cause for the rise of the price of food; but it will
make no alteration in the quantity produced. It leaves undisturbed too
the number of labourers, as well as the demand for them; for there will
be neither an increase nor a diminution of capital. The quantity of
necessaries to be allotted to the labourer, depends on the comparative
demand and supply of necessaries, with the comparative demand and supply
of labour; money being only the medium in which the quantity is
expressed; and as neither of these is altered, the rea