orn regulates the
value of all other commodities; for to do that, it should not vary in
relative value to them. If it could not, then it must be maintained,
that whether corn be obtained on rich, or on poor land, with much
labour, or with little, with the aid of machinery, or without, it would
always exchange for an equal quantity of all other commodities.

I cannot, however, but remark that, though Adam Smith's general
doctrines correspond with this which I have just quoted, yet in one part
of his work he appears to have given a correct account of the nature of
value. "The proportion between the value of gold and silver, and that of
goods of any other kind, _depends in all cases_," he says, "_upon the
proportion between the quantity of labour which is necessary in order to
bring a certain quantity of gold and silver to market, and that which is
necessary to bring thither a certain quantity of any other sort of
goods_." Does he not here fully acknowledge that if any increase takes
place in the quantity of labour, required to bring one sort of goods to
market, whilst no such increase takes place in bringing another sort
thither, those goods will rise in relative value. If no more labour be
required to bring cloth and gold to market, they will not vary in
relative value, but if more labour be required to bring corn and shoes
to market, will not corn and shoes rise in value relatively to cloth,
and money made of gold?

Adam Smith again considers that the effect of the bounty is to cause a
partial degradation in the value of money. "That degradation," says he
"in the value of silver, which is the effect of the fertility of the
mines, and which operates equally, or very nearly equally, through the
greater part of the commercial world, is a matter of very little
consequence to any particular country. The consequent rise of all money
prices, though it does not make those who receive them really richer,
does not make them really poorer. A service of plate becomes really
cheaper, and every thing else remains precisely of the same real value
as before." This observation is most correct.

"But that degradation in the value of silver, which being the effect
either of the peculiar situation, or of the political institutions of a
particular country, takes place only in that country, is a matter of
very great consequence, which, far from tending to make any body really
richer, tends to make every body really poorer. The rise in the