204 Professor Whewell o« the Mathematical Exposition 



for the capital already present, and for the influx. And in this 

 case the effect of competition will be, that some persons will be 

 found willing to employ capital for a less profit than that which 

 was till then the usual rate, and the rate of profits will fall. If 

 from the excess of the power to produce over the disposition to 

 consume, or from any other cause of the accumulation of wealth, 

 capital increases faster than the means of employing it at the 

 old rate of profits, that rate will in the long run fall. This 

 may be considered as an increase of the supply of capital, 

 without a proportional increase of the demand. And the profit, 

 which is the price of the employment of capital, will fall with 

 the increased supply, according to laws resembling those which 

 regulate the price of exchangeable articles. According to what 

 rule the rate of profits will fall, with the accumulation of capital, 

 we have no means of determining with any accuracy ; but the 

 dependence of the two quantities is manifest. Men will cease to 

 employ capital profitably when they prefer spending it in the 

 mamier in which the state of luxury allows, to increasing it in 

 the manner in which the state of trade allows ; and this is the 

 cause which checks the fall of profits by checking the accu- 

 mulation on which it dej)ends. 



I .shall not at present consider changes in the rate of profits. 

 This rate will be assumed to be a constant element. But in 

 jeference to the further ])rosecution of this application of mathe- 

 matics, it is evident, that the same principles which we shall 

 )»ow have to employ in the case of supply and price, will point 

 out also the jiath which we must follow, when we undertake to 

 trace the effects of accuniulating wealth and declining profits, 

 and the consequences which result with respect to rent, &c. from 

 combining this change with those which are at present the subject 

 of our consideration. 



