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metallic money. Supposing, therefore, money always to require in its production the sattie quantity of labour and capital, it will regularly fall in value in the progress of cultivation and population; while labour being uniform in value will rise in money price,[1] and the demand for corn increasing, compared with the demand for labour, the money price of corn will probably rise still more. But if the labourers were paid at all times exactly the same quantity of corn, (which, however, cannot be the case,) the value of corn, like the value of wages, would be constant, and the variations of fertility would only show themselves in the enormous variations of profits.
Thus, when labour is paid at ten quarters each man, the numbers in the eighth column, or the value of a given quantity of corn, must, it is obvious, always be the same, whatever be the quantity produced; and when the land is fertile, the small quantity of labour required to produce ten quarters is balanced by the greit profits which appear in the fourth column.
- ↑ It is this rise in the money price of labour, occasioned by the fall of profits, which Mr. Ricardo considers as that necassary rise in the value of labour on which he makes so much depend in his system; but if the foregoing reasoning be well founded, it follows that this rise is not a rise in the value of labour, but a fall in the value of money.
