ty of the actual price of corn to the
actual produce_, and the different effect which would attend a great
reduction in the price of any particular manufacture, and a great
reduction in the price of raw produce."[54]

How are these passages to be reconciled to that which affirms, that if
the necessaries of life had not the property of creating an increase of
demand proportioned to their increased quantity, the abundant quantity
produced would then, and then only, reduce the price of raw produce to
the cost of production? If corn is never under its natural price, it is
never more abundant than the actual population require it to be for
their own consumption; no store can be laid up for the consumption of
others; it can never then by its cheapness and abundance be a stimulus
to population. In proportion as corn can be produced cheaply, the
increased wages of the labourers will have more power to maintain
families. In America, population increases rapidly, because food can be
produced at a cheap price, and not because an abundant supply has been
previously provided. In Europe population increases comparatively
slowly, because food cannot be produced at a cheap value. In the usual
and ordinary course of things, the demand for all commodities precedes
their supply. By saying, that corn would, like manufactures, sink to its
price of production, if it could not raise up demanders, Mr. Malthus
cannot mean that all rent would be absorbed; for he has himself justly
remarked, that if all rent were given up by the landlords, corn would
not fall in price; rent being the effect, and not the cause of high
price, and there being always one quality of land in cultivation which
pays no rent whatever, the corn from which replaces by its price, only
wages and profits.

In the following passage, Mr. Malthus has given an able exposition of
the causes of the rise in the price of raw produce in rich and
progressive countries, in every word of which I concur; but it appears
to me to be at variance with some of the propositions maintained by him
in some parts of his Essay on Rent. "I have no hesitation in stating,
that, independently of the irregularities in the currency of a country,
and other temporary and accidental circumstances, the cause of the high
comparative money price of corn is its high comparative _real price_, or
the greater quantity of capital and labour which must be employed to
produce it; and that the reasons why the real pric