, is not "cheaper" than wholesome meat at sevenpence a
pound; it is probably much dearer; but if, by watching your opportunity,
you can get the wholesome meat for sixpence a pound, it is cheaper to
you by a penny, which you have gained, and the seller has lost. The
present rage for cheapness is either, therefore, simply and literally a
rage for badness of all commodities, or it is an attempt to find persons
whose necessities will force them to let you have more than you should
for your money. It is quite easy to produce such persons, and in large
numbers; for the more distress there is in a nation, the more cheapness
of this sort you can obtain, and your boasted cheapness is thus merely a
measure of the extent of your national distress.

There is, indeed, a condition of apparent cheapness, which we have some
right to be triumphant in; namely, the real reduction in cost of
articles by right application of labour. But in this case the article is
only cheap with reference to its _former_ price; the so-called cheapness
is only our expression for the sensation of contrast between its former
and existing prices. So soon as the new methods of producing the article
are established, it ceases to be esteemed either cheap or dear, at the
new price, as at the old one, and is felt to be cheap only when accident
enables it to be purchased beneath this new value. And it is no
advantage to produce the article more easily, except as it enables you
to multiply your population. Cheapness of this kind is merely the
discovery that more men can be maintained on the same ground; and the
question how many you will maintain in proportion to your additional
means, remains exactly in the same terms that it did before.

A form of immediate cheapness results, however, in many cases, without
distress, from the labour of a population where food is redundant, or
where the labour by which the food is produced leaves much idle time on
their hands, which may be applied to the production of "cheap" articles.

All such phenomena indicate to the political economist places where the
labour is unbalanced. In the first case, the just balance is to be
effected by taking labourers from the spot where pressure exists, and
sending them to that where food is redundant. In the second, the
cheapness is a local accident, advantageous to the local purchaser,
disadvantageous to the local producer. It is one of the first duties of
commerce to extend the market, and thus