POLITICAL ECONOMY. 105 



Low Prices. 



While supplies (of cotton, sugar, &c. &c.) continue 

 to arrive during a series of years of low prices, the 

 presumption is, that the prices, low as they are and 

 have been, are sufficient to defray the cost of produc- 

 tion. 



Landed Property. 



It is totally impossible that the ordinary and 

 general price of food should not command the price 

 of the land that raises it, the labourer who cultivates 

 it, and the farmer who affords the capital and cur- 

 rent expenses from day to day. When the quantity 

 sown shall have adapted itself to the supply, all tem- 

 porary irregularities will pass away, and farmers and 

 landlords will obtain the prices to which, as compared 

 with other articles, they are entitled : for it is not in 

 the nature of things that the general price of the ma- 

 terials of human sustenance should permanently fall 

 short of the cost of producing them. 



Land Speculations. 



Every purchase of land in Great Britain, previous 

 to 1811, whether made with or without judgment, 

 turned out profitable according to the then market 

 rates : the reverse, until recently, has since been 

 almost general. 



Proportion. 



It will invariably be found true, that all the great 

 results of political economy respecting wealth, depend 

 upon proportions,* and it is from overlooking this 

 most important truth that so many errors have pre- 

 vailed in the prediction of consequences, that nations 

 have been enriched when it was expected they would 



* This observation applies to every action in human life; the 

 difficulty being to find the just proportion or medium, which it 

 is much safer, however, to estimate too low than too high. 



