benefited. If the labourers were to give up their whole wages, the
landlords would derive no advantage from such a circumstance; but in
both cases the farmer would receive and retain all which they
relinquished. It has been my endeavour to shew in this work, that a
fall of wages would have no other effect than to raise profits.

Another cause of the rise of rent, according to Mr. Malthus, is "such
agricultural improvements, or such increase of exertions, as will
diminish the number of labourers necessary to produce a given effect."
This would not raise the value of the whole produce, and would therefore
not increase rent. It would rather have a contrary tendency, it would
lower rent; for if in consequence of these improvements, the actual
quantity of food required could be furnished either with fewer hands, or
with a less quantity of land, the price of raw produce would fall, and
capital would be withdrawn from the land.[56] Nothing can raise rent,
but a demand for new land of an inferior quality, or some cause which
shall occasion an alteration in the relative fertility of the land
already under cultivation.[57] Improvements in agriculture, and in the
division of labour, are common to all land; they increase the absolute
quantity of raw produce obtained from each, but probably do not much
disturb the relative proportions which before existed between them.

Mr. Malthus has justly commented on an error of Adam Smith, and says,
"the substance of his (Dr. Smith's) argument is, that corn is of so
peculiar a nature, that its real price cannot be raised by an increase
of its money price; and that, as it is clearly an increase of real price
alone, which can encourage its production, the rise of money price,
occasioned by a bounty, can have no such effect."

He continues: "It is by no means intended to deny the powerful influence
of the price of corn upon the price of labour, on an average of a
considerable number of years; but that this influence is not such as to
prevent the movement of capital to, or from the land, which is the
precise point in question, will be made sufficiently evident by a short
inquiry into the manner in which labour is paid, and brought into the
market, and by a consideration of the consequences to which the
assumption of Adam Smith's proposition would inevitably lead."[58]

Mr. Malthus then proceeds to shew, that demand and high price will as
effectually encourage the production of raw produce, as