198 Of Corn-Laws. Bk.iii. 



is not easily calculated ; and certainly, when we 

 consider what has been actually done in some 

 districts of England and Scotland, and compare 

 it with what remains to be done in other districts, 

 we must allow that no near approach to this limit 

 has yet been made. On account of the high mo- 

 ney price of labour, and of the materials of agri- 

 cultural capital, occasioned partly by direct and 

 indirect taxation, and partly, or perhaps chiefly 

 by the great prosperity of our foreign commerce,* 

 new lands cannot be brought into cultivation, nor 

 great improvements made on the old, without a 

 high money price of grain ; but these lands, when 

 they have been so brought into cultivation, or im- 

 proved, have by no means turned out unproduc- 

 tive. The quantity and value of their produce 

 have borne a full and fair proportion to the quan- 

 tity of capital and labour employed upon them ; 

 and they were cultivated with great advantage 

 both to individuals and the state, as long as the 

 same, or nearly the same, relations between the 

 value of produce and the cost of production, which 

 prompted this cultivation, continued to exist. 

 In such a state of the soil, the British empire 



* No restrictions upon the importation of grain^ however ab- 

 surdly severe, could permanently maintain our corn and labour at 

 a much higher price than in the rest of Europe, if such restric- 

 tions were essentially to interfere with the prosperity of our foreign 

 commerce. When the money price of labour is high in any coun- 

 try, or, what is the same thing, when the value of money is low, 

 nothing can prevent it from going out to find its level, but some 

 comparative advantages, either natural or acquired, which enable 

 such country to maintain the abundance of its exports, notwith- 

 standing the high money price of its labour. 



