138 ADAM SMITH. 



value, or real prices, to the very practical question of the 

 Corn Laws. They who are against all legislative measures, 

 whether for revenue or protection, that can obstruct the 

 importation of corn, contend 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 produce 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 counteracted by the operation of two causes, 

 both the increased amount of the capital employed in 

 manufacturing labour would tend to restore the rate of 

 wages, and the extension of foreign commerce, operating 

 upon domestic 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, how- 

 ever, 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, ex- 

 cept 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, therefore, in the national policy appears likely 

 to effect any permanent improvement in his lot. 



