from Mr. Malthus's work on
population, which appears to me completely to answer his objection. "The
price of labour, when left to find its natural level, is a most
important political barometer, expressing the relation between the
supply of provisions, and the demand for them, between the quantity to
be consumed, and the number of consumers; and, taken on the average,
independently of accidental circumstances, it further expresses,
clearly, the wants of the society respecting population, that is,
whatever may be the number of children to a marriage necessary to
maintain exactly the present population, the price of labour will be
just sufficient to support this number, or be above it, or below it,
according to the state of the real funds, for the maintenance of labour,
whether stationary, progressive, or retrograde. Instead, however, of
considering it in this light, we consider it as something which we may
raise or depress at pleasure, something which depends principally on his
majesty's justices of the peace. When an advance in the price of
provisions already expresses that the demand is too great for the
supply, in order to put the labourer in the same condition as before, we
raise the price of labour, that is, we increase the demand, and are then
much surprised, that the price of provisions continues rising. In this,
we act much in the same manner, as if, when the quicksilver in the
common weather glass, stood at _stormy_, we were to raise it by some
forcible pressure to settled fair, and then be greatly astonished that
it continued raining."

"The price of labour will express, clearly, the wants of the society
respecting population;" it will be just sufficient to support the
population, which at that time the state of the funds for the
maintenance of labourers, requires. If the labourer's wages were before
only adequate to supply the requisite population, they will, after the
tax, be inadequate to that supply, for he will not have the same funds
to expend on his family. Labour will therefore rise, because the demand
continues, and it is only by raising the price, that the supply is not
checked.

Nothing is more common, than to see hats or malt rise when taxed; they
rise because the requisite supply would not be afforded if they did not
rise: so with labour, when wages are taxed, its price rises, because, if
it did not, the requisite population would not be kept up. Does not Mr.
Buchanan allow all that is contended