sical
properties, he speaks with an unusual want of precision, and
qualifies his positions by the expressions much, and in any
considerable degree. But it should be recollected, that, with these
qualifications, the argument is brought forward expressly for the
purpose of showing, that the rise of price, acknowledged to be
occasioned by a bounty, on its first establishment, is nominal and
not real. Now, what is meant to be distinctly asserted here is, that
a rise of price occasioned by a bounty upon the exportation or
restrictions upon the importation of corn, cannot be less real than
a rise of price to the same amount, occasioned by a course of bad
seasons, an increase of population, the rapid progress of commercial
wealth, or any other natural cause; and that, if Dr Smith's
argument, with its qualifications, be valid for the purpose for
which it is advanced, it applies equally to an increased price
occasioned by a natural demand.

Let us suppose, for instance, an increase in the demand and the
price of corn, occasioned by an unusually prosperous state of our
manufactures and foreign commerce; a fact which has frequently come
within our own experience. According to the principles of supply and
demand, and the general principles of the Wealth of nations, such an
increase in the price of corn would give a decided stimulus to
agriculture; and a more than usual quantity of capital would be laid
out upon the land, as appears obviously to have been the case in
this country during the last twenty years. According to the peculiar
argument of Dr Smith, however, no such stimulus could have been
given to agriculture. The rise in the price of corn would have been
immediately followed by a proportionate rise in the price of labour
and of all other commodities; and, though the farmer and landlord
might have obtained, on an average, seventy five shillings a quarter
for their corn, instead of sixty, yet the farmer would not have been
enabled to cultivate better, nor the landlord to live better. And
thus it would appear, that agriculture is beyond the operation of
that principle, which distributes the capital of a nation according
to the varying profits of stock in different employments; and that
no increase of price can, at any time or in any country, materially
accelerate the growth of corn, or determine a greater quantity of
capital to agriculture.

The experience of every person, who sees what is going forward on
the land, and t