ally, no material change can take
place in the value of either, without producing both lasting and
temporary effects, which have a most powerful influence on the
distribution of property, and on the demand and supply of particular
commodities. The discovery of the mines of America, during the time
that it raised the price of corn between three and four times, did
not nearly so much as double the price of labour; and, while it
permanently diminished the power of all fixed incomes, it gave a
prodigious increase of power to all landlords and capitalists. In a
similar manner, the fall in the price of corn, from whatever cause
it took place, which occurred towards the middle of the last
century, accompanied as it was by a rise, rather than a fall in the
price of labour, must have given a great relative check to the
employment of capital upon the land, and a great relative stimulus
to population; a state of things precisely calculated to produce the
reaction afterwards experienced, and to convert us from an exporting
to an importing nation.

It is by no means sufficient for Dr Smith's argument, that the price
of corn should determine the price of labour under precisely the
same circumstances of supply and demand. To make it applicable to
his purpose, he must show, in addition, that a natural or artificial
rise in the price of corn, or in the value of silver, will make no
alteration in the state of property, and in the supply and demand
of corn and labour; a position which experience uniformly
contradicts.

Nothing then can be more evident both from theory and experience,
than that the price of corn does not immediately and generally
regulate the prices of labour and all other commodities; and that
the real price of corn is capable of varying for periods of
sufficient length to give a decided stimulus or discouragement to
agriculture. It is, of course, only to a temporary encouragement or
discouragement, that any commodity, where the competition is free,
can be subjected. We may increase the capital employed either upon
the land or in the cotton manufacture, but it is impossible
permanently to raise the profits of farmers or particular
manufacturers above the level of other profits; and, after the
influx of a certain quantity of capital, they will necessarily be
equalized. Corn, in this respect, is subjected to the same laws as
other commodities, and the difference between them is by no means so
great as stated by Dr Smith