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Show 96 ON THE NATURE AND [ CH. J r.· out any reference to labour. And further, where all the land is appropriated, the payn1ent of rent is another condition of the supply of most of the cotntnodities of home growth and n1anufacture. It is unquestionably true, and it is a truth which involves very important consequences, that the cost of the · n1ain vegetable food of civilized and improved countries, 'vhich requires in its production a considerable quantity of labour and capital, is resolvable almost entirely into wages and profits, as will be more fu11y explained in the next chapter. But though it follows that the price of corn is thus nearly independent of rent, yet as this price, so cleter1nined, ·does actually pay rent on the great mass of the lands of the country, it is evident that the pay1nent of. rent, or, 'vhat con1es to the san1e thing, of such a price as will pay rent, is a necessary condition of the supply of the great mass of COn1modities. Adam Sn1ith himself states, that rent "enters into the eomposition of the price of cotninodities in a different way from wages and profit." " I-Iigh or low wages or profit (he says) are the causes of ·high or lo\v price ; high or low rent is the effect of it. It is because high or low wages and profit n1ust be paid, in order to bring a particular con1- modity to market, that its price is high or low. But it is because its · price is high or low, a great deal more, or very little more, or no 1nore, than what is sufficient to pay those 'vages and profits, ·that it affords a high rent, or a low rent, or rio rent at all.''* In this passage Ada~ Sn1ith distinctly * Wealth of N.ations, Book I. c. xi. p. 226. 6th edit. SEC. IV.] MEASU H.ES OF VALUE. 97 allows that rent is a consequence, not a cause of price; but he evidently does not consider this ad~ 1ission as invalidating his general doctrine respect~ ni? ~he c~n1ponent pa~ts of ~ri~e. Nor in reality Is It Invalidated by this adinission. It is still true that the cost of the great mass of cotntnodities is resolvable into wages, profits, and rent. Some of then1 may cost a considerable quantity of rent land a s1nall qua~1 tity of labour and capital; others a great .quantity of labour and capital, and a small quantity o~ rent; and a very few n1ay be nearly resolvable 1nto wages and profits, or even wao·es · alone. But, as it is known that the latter clas~ is confined ~o a very small proportion of a country's products, It follows that the payment of rent is an absolutely necessary condition of the supply of the grea~ 111ass of comn1odities, and n1ay properly be ·consider~d as a con1ponent part of price. Allowing then that the price of the n1ain veo·etable food o~ an improving country is determit~ed hy the q~antity of labour and capital e1nployed to produce 1t under the most unfavourable circumstances, yet if we allow, at the same ti1ne, that an <:qual value of produce is raised on rich land with h~tle labour a~d capital, we can hardly maintain, ~I.th any propnety of language, the general proposition that the quantity of labour realized in dif- . ferent commodities regulates their exchano·eable value.=K~ On account of the varieties of soil6 alone constant exchanges a~·e taking plact:, which directly * Ricardo's Polit. Econ. c. i. p. 5.· H |
