there would not long be any difficulty in procuring the requisite number
of hands, to be employed by those funds; but owing to the increasing
difficulty of making constant additions to the food of the country,
funds of the same value would probably not maintain the same quantity of
labour. If the necessaries of the workman could be constantly increased
with the same facility, there could be no permanent alteration in the
rate of profits or wages, to whatever amount capital might be
accumulated. Adam Smith, however, uniformly ascribes the fall of profits
to accumulation of capital, and to the competition which will result
from it, without ever adverting to the increasing difficulty of
providing food for the additional number of labourers which the
additional capital will employ. "The increase of stock he says, which
raises wages, tends to lower profit. When the stocks of many rich
merchants are turned into the same trade, their mutual competition
naturally tends to lower its profit; and when there is a like increase
of stock in all the different trades carried on in the same society, the
same competition must produce the same effect in all." Adam Smith speaks
here of a rise of wages, but it is of a temporary rise, proceeding from
increased funds before the population is increased; and he does not
appear to see, that at the same time that capital is increased, the work
to be effected by capital, is increased in the same proportion. M. Say
has however most satisfactorily shewn, that there is no amount of
capital which may not be employed in a country, because demand is only
limited by production. No man produces, but with a view to consume or
sell, and he never sells, but with an intention to purchase some other
commodity, which may be immediately useful to him, or which may
contribute to future production. By producing, then, he necessarily
becomes either the consumer of his own goods, or the purchaser and
consumer of the goods of some other person. It is not to be supposed
that he should, for any length of time, be ill-informed of the
commodities which he can most advantageously produce, to attain the
object which he has in view, namely, the possession of other goods; and
therefore it is not probable that he will continually produce a
commodity for which there is no demand.[32]

There cannot then be accumulated in a country any amount of capital
which cannot be employed productively, until wages rise so high in
consequen