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Show 82 ON THE NATURE AND [ CH. II. persons are the same or. differe~t fro1n the actual labourers of the land. The· prtce of the produce ,vill be determined by the general supply compared with the general demand, and 'vill be precisely the same, vvhether the labourer pays a :ent, or uses the land without rent. The only difference is that, in the latter case, vvhat retnains of this price, after paying the labour ~ncl capital, vvill go to the san1e person that contnbute~ the labour, which is almost equivalent to saytng, that the labourer would be better off, if he vvere a possessor of land as well as labour-a fact not to be disputed, but which by no n1eans in1plies that the labourer, who in the lottery of human life has not dravln a prize of land, suffers any hardship or injustice in being obliged to give sotnething in exchange for the use? of 'vhat belongs to another. The possessot~ s of land, whoever they may be, conduct thenlsel ves with Jeo·ard to their possessions,. exactly in ' b • the same ,vay as the posses·sors of labour and of capi-tal, and exchange what they have, for as n1any other commodities as the society is \Villing to give them for it. . The three conditions therefore above specified must, in every society, be necessarily fulfilled, in order to obtain the supply of by far the greate1· part of the comn1odities which it wants; and the compensation which fulfils these conditions, or the price of any exchangeable commodity, may be considered as consisting'of three parts-that which pays the wages of the labourer employed in its production; that ,vhich pays the profits of capital SEC. III.] MEASURES OF VALUE. 83 by \Vhich such production bas been facilitated· and that \V hich pays the 1·ent of land, or the re~ 1nuneration for the raw tnaterials and food furnished by the landlord ;-the price of each of these component parts being detern1ined exactly by the same causes as those \Vhich determine the price of the whole. . The price which fulfils these conditions is preCis~ ly what Adam Stnith calls the natural price. I should be rather more disposed to call it the necessary price, because the term necessary bette1· expre.sses a reference to the conditions of supply, a.nd 1s, on that account, susceptible of a more Simple .defin~tion. 1~o explain natural price, Adan1 ~m1th 1s obhged to use a good deal of circurnlocutton; and though he n1akes it on the whole sufficiently clear, yet, as he calls to his assistance two other tern1s, each of which n1ight aln1ost as well ~ave been· used as the one adopted, the definition· 1s not quite satisfactory.* lf, ho~rever, we use th~ ter~ suggested, the definition of necessary pr1ce ":'Ill be very ea.sy and simple. It "\Vill be, the pnce necessary, 1n the actual circumstances of the society, to ~ri~g the con1modity regularly to the market. Tl:1s 1s only a shorter description of what. ~dam. S1n1th n1eans by natural price, as contr~disttnguish~d. from market price, or the price at ~h1ch cotntnod1tres actually sell in the n1arket, whtch, fron1 the variations of the seasons or the accid~ntal tniscalculations of the suppliers, are so.metnnes sold higher and son1etin1es lower than * Book I. chap. vii. G~ |
