WEALTH OF NATIONS. 211 



cal question of the Corn Laws. They who are against 

 all legislative measures, whether for revenue or pro- 

 tection, that can obstruct the importation of corn, con- 

 tend for the most part that their plan will lower the 

 price of bread, though some of the most distinguished 

 advocates of free trade in corn deny that it could pro- 

 duce any such effect. For my own part, I can hardly 

 doubt, that it might in some, though no great degree, 

 lower the average price of grain and of bread. But if 

 it produced this effect, undoubtedly its tendency would 

 be to lower the average rate of wages. This I say, 

 would be its tendency ; but that tendency would be coun- 

 teracted by the operation of two causes, both the in- 

 creased amount of the capital employed in manufactur- 

 ing labour would tend to restore the rate of wages, and 

 the extension of foreign commerce, operating upon do- 

 mestic industry in all its branches, would produce the 

 same effect; not to mention that the money rate of wages 

 might fall, and the real rate remain the same, in con- 

 sequence of living having become cheaper. I must, 

 however, admit that the interest of the working classes in 

 this question is not so manifest, though we should not 

 wholly neglect it, as that of the capitalist. The main 

 reason why the labourer has no very material interest 

 in it, is this : In almost every state of society, indeed 

 in every state, except that of a new and unpeopled 

 country, the tendency above explained of the labourer 

 to cause a glut of his only merchandise, his labour, in 

 the market, is sure to bring down his profits, that is, 

 his wages, to the lowest or nearly the lowest amount on 

 which he can subsist. No change of this kind, there- 

 fore, in the national policy appears likely to effect any 

 permanent improvement in his lot. 



Hitherto we have been treating only of labour, and 

 of matters immediately and directly connected with it; 

 but in the remaining six chapters of the first book, Dr. 

 Smith considers other subjects, namely, capital and 

 its profits, or the revenue it yields, and also the man- 



