Adam Smith. Yet, still it is true, that in all transactions of bargain and sale, there is a principle in constant operation, which can determine, and does actually determine, the prices of commodities, independently of any considerations of cost, or of the ordinary wages, profits, and rent expended in their producticn. And this is found to operate, not only permanently upon that class of commodities which may be considered as monopolies, but temporarily and immediately upon all commodities, and strikingly and preeminently so upon all sorts of raw produce.
It has never been a matter of doubt, that the principle of demand and supply determines exclusively, and very regularly and accurately, the prices of monopolized commodities, without reference to the ordinary cost of their production; and our daily and uniform experience shows us that the prices of raw products, particularly those which are most affected by the seasons, are at the moment of their sale determined always by the higgling of the market, and differ widely in different years, and at different times, while the outgoings required to produce them, may have been very nearly the same, and the general rate of profits has not varied.
With regard, therefore, to a class of commodities of the greatest extent, it is acknowledged that the existing market prices are, at the moment they are fixed, determined upon a principle distinct from the cost of production, and that these prices are in reality almost always different from what they would have been, if this cost had exclusively regulated them.
There is indeed another class of commodities, such as manufactures, particularly those in which the raw material is cheap, where the existing market prices much more frequently coincide with the costs of production, and may appear therefore to be exclusively determined by them. Even here, however, our familiar experience shews us, that any alteration in the proportion of the demand to the supply quite overcomes for a time the influence of these costs; and
