22 Of the general Checks to Population, Bk. i. 



number of labourers receiving the same money- 

 wages will necessarily, by their competition, in- 

 crease the money-price of corn. This is, in fact, 

 a real fall in the price of labour; and,, during this 

 period, the condition of the lower classes of the 

 community must be gradually growing worse. 

 But the farmers and capitalists are growing rich 

 from the real cheapness of labour. Their in- 

 creasing capitals enable them to employ a greater 

 number of men; and, as the population had pro- 

 bably suffered some check from the greater diffi- 

 culty of supporting a family, the demand for la- 

 bour, after a certain period, would be great in 

 proportion to the supply, and its price would of 

 course rise, if left to find its natural level; and 

 thus the wages of labour, and consequently the 

 condition of the lower classes of society, might 

 have progressive and retrograde movements, 

 though the price of labour might never nominally 

 fall. 



In savage life, where there is no regular price 

 of labour, it is little to be doubted that similar 

 oscillations took place. When population has in- 

 creased nearly to the utmost limits of the food, all 

 the preventive and the positive checks will natu- 



find no employment but in agriculture, their competition might 

 so lower the money-price of labour, as to prevent the increase of 

 population from occasioning an effective demand for more corn; 

 or, in other words, if the landlords and farmers could get nothing 

 but an additional quantity of agricultural labour in exchange for 

 any additional produce which they could raise, they might not be 

 tempted to raise it. 



