tion, but not the
cause--it is only because the expenditure of the people takes this
direction, that the market price of necessaries exceeds the natural
price, and that the quantity of food required is produced; and it is
because the number of people is increased, that wages again fall.

What motive can a farmer have to produce more corn than is actually
demanded, when the consequence would be a depression of its market price
below its natural price, and consequently a privation to him of a
portion of his profits, by reducing them below the general rate? "If,"
says Mr. Malthus, "the necessaries of life, the most important products
of land, had not the property of creating an increase of demand
proportioned to their increased quantity, such increased quantity would
occasion a fall in their exchangeable value.[53] However abundant might
be the produce of a country, its population might remain stationary. And
this abundance without a proportionate demand, and with a very high corn
price of labour, which would naturally take place under these
circumstances, might reduce the price of raw produce, like the price of
manufactures, to the cost of production."

"Might reduce the price of raw produce to the cost of production?" Is it
ever for any length of time either above or below this price? Does not
Mr. Malthus himself, state it never to be so? "I hope," he says, "to be
excused for dwelling a little, and presenting to the reader in various
forms the doctrine, that corn, in reference to the quantity _actually
produced_, is sold at its necessary price like manufactures, because I
consider it as a truth of the highest importance, which has been
overlooked by the economists, by Adam Smith, and all those writers, who
have represented raw produce as selling always at a monopoly price."

"Every extensive country may thus be considered as possessing a
gradation of machines for the production of corn and raw materials,
including in this gradation not only all the various qualities of poor
land, of which every territory has generally an abundance, but the
inferior machinery which may be said to be employed when good land is
further and further forced for additional produce. As the price of raw
produce continues to rise, these inferior machines are successively
called into action; and as the price of raw produce continues to fall,
they are successively thrown out of action. The illustration here used
serves to shew at once the _necessi