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Show 246 OF THE WAGES OF LABOU:rt. [~H. IV. and the interest of the tnasters, 'vould soon reduce th~tn to the lo\vest rate which is consistent with co1nmon humanity."* The reader will be aware, from what has been already said, that in the first case here noticed, it is not the esteem for the dexterity and ingenuity referred to, which raises the price of the comn1odity, but their scarcity, and the consequent scarcity of the articles produced by thern, con1p~red with the demand. And in the latter case, it is not con1mon humanity which interferes to prev~nt the price of labour from falling still lo\\rer. If humanity could have successfully interfered, it ought to have interfered long before, and prevented any pre1nature mortality from being occasioned by bad or insufficient food. But unfortunately, co1nn1on hun1anity cannot alter the resources of a country. While these are stationary, and the habits of the lo\ver classes prompt thern to supply a stationary population cheaply, the wages of labour \vill be scanty ; but still they cannot fall below· \Vhat is necessary, under the actual habits of the people, to keep up a stationary population; because, by the supposition, the resources of the country are stationary, not increasing or declining, and consequently the principle of demand and supply would always interfere to prevent such \vages as '\rould either occasion an Increase or di~ninution of people. * W calth of Nations, Book I. chap. vii. p. 108. SEC. II.] OF THE WAGES OF LABOUR • . 247 SECTION II. Of the Causes which principally affect the llabits of the Labouring Classes. Mr. Ricardo has defined the natural price of labour to be " that price "vhich is necessary to enable the labourers one with another to subsist, and to perpetuate their race, without either increase o:· diminution.''* This price I should really be d1sposed to call a most unnatural price; because in a natural state of things, that is, 'vithout great impediments to the progress of wealth and population, such a price could. not generally. occur for hundreds of years. But if this price be really rare, ~nd, in an ordinary state of things, at so great a 'chstance ' in point of time, it n1ust evidently lead to great errors to consider the n1arket-prices of labour as only .ten1porary deviations above and belo\v that fixed price to \vhich they \Vill very soon return. rfhe natural or necessary price of labour in any country I should define to be, " that price which, in , the actual circumstances of the society, is necessary to occasion an average supply of labourers, sufficient to n1eettheaverageden1and." And the market price I should define to be, the actual price in the market, which frotn temporary causes is sometimes. * Polit. Econ. c. v. p. 85. ~d edit. R4 |
