er than the usual average, till a too rapid increase of
population causes a competition among the labourers, and a
consequent diminution of the price of labour below the usual rate.

This account of the manner in which the price of corn may be
expected to operate upon the price of labour, according to the laws
which regulate the progress of population, evidently shows, that
corn and labour rarely keep an even pace together; but must often be
separated at a sufficient distance and for a sufficient time, to
change the direction of capital.

As a further confirmation of this truth, it may be useful to
consider, secondly, the consequences to which the assumption of Dr
Smith's proposition would inevitably lead.

If we suppose, that the real price of corn is unchangeable, or not
capable of experiencing a relative increase or decrease of value,
compared with labour and other commodities, it will follow, that
agriculture is at once excluded from the operation of that
principle, so beautifully explained and illustrated by Dr Smith, by
which capital flows from one employment to another, according to the
various and necessarily fluctuating wants of society. It will follow,
that the growth of corn has, at all times, and in all countries,
proceeded with a uniform unvarying pace, occasioned only by the
equable increase of agricultural capital, and can never have been
accelerated, or retarded, by variations of demand. It will follow,
that if a country happened to be either overstocked or understocked
with corn, no motive of interest could exist for withdrawing capital
from agriculture, in the one case, or adding to it in the other, and
thus restoring the equilibrium between its different kinds of
produce. But these consequences, which would incontestably follow
from the doctrine, that the price of corn immediately and entirely
regulates the prices of labour and of all other commodities, are so
directly contrary to all experience, that the doctrine itself cannot
possibly be true; and we may be assured, that, whatever influence
the price of corn may have upon other commodities, it is neither so
immediate nor so complete, as to make this kind of produce an
exception to all others.

That no such exception exists with regard to corn, is implied in all
the general reasonings of the Wealth of nations. Dr Smith evidently
felt this; and wherever, in consequence, he does not shift the
question from the exchangeable value of corn to its phy