ry, it can only fall in price, either because
a less quantity of capital and labour may be employed to produce it, or
because money has risen in value.

A variation arising from the latter of either of these alternatives, an
altered value of money, is common at once to all commodities; but a
variation arising from the former cause, is confined to the particular
commodity requiring more or less labour in its production. By allowing
the free importation of corn, or by improvements in agriculture, raw
produce would fall; but the price of no other commodity would be
affected, except in proportion to the fall in the real value, or cost of
production, of the raw produce which entered into its composition.

Mr. Malthus, having acknowledged this principle, cannot, I think,
consistently maintain that the whole money value of all the commodities
in the country must sink exactly in proportion to the fall in the price
of corn. If the corn consumed in the country were of the value of ten
millions per annum, and the manufactured and foreign commodities
consumed were of the value of twenty millions, making altogether thirty
millions, it would not be admissible to infer that the annual
expenditure was reduced to 15 millions, because corn had fallen 50 per
cent., or from 10 to 5 millions.

The value of the raw produce which entered into the composition of these
manufactures might not, for example, exceed 20 per cent. of their whole
value, and, therefore, the fall in the value of manufactured
commodities, instead of being from 20 to 10 millions, would be only from
20 to 18 millions; and after the fall in the price of corn of 50 per
cent., the whole amount of the annual expenditure, instead of falling
from 30 to 25 millions, would fall from 30 to 23 millions.[61]

Instead of thus considering the effect of a fall in the value of raw
produce; as Mr. Malthus was bound to do by his previous admission; he
considers it as precisely the same thing with a rise of 100 per cent. in
the value of money, and, therefore, argues as if all commodities would
sink to half their former price.

"During the twenty years, beginning with 1794," he says, "and ending
with 1813, the average price of British corn per quarter was about
eighty-three shillings; during the ten years ending with 1813,
ninety-two shillings; and during the last five years of the twenty, one
hundred and eight shillings. In the course of these twenty years, the
Government borrowed near