in Manufactures. 
197 
1831.] 
own palliative along with them ; for the more rapidly improvements are introduced, 
the more speedily will prices he lowered, and ultimate demand extended : at the 
worst, this state of suffering can only be temporary ; and the increasing permanent 
welfare of the whole society, must infinitely outweigh the passing sufferings of 
the few. 
Although the introduction of capital, and improved processes in manufactures, 
tend to national enrichment, by permanently lowering the price of wrought goods, 
this is not the effect of the introduction of similar processes into agriculture ; in 
the cultivation of the soil, these improvements only permit a similar progressive 
increase of population and wealth, to what takes place in underpeopled and fertile 
countries, in place of causing a permanent fall of price : for if we suppose capital 
to be hurried on the land, on the occurrence of an improved agricultural process, 
as we have supposed capital to be hurried to manufactures, the impoverishment of 
agriculturalists would be inevitable. — We have seen, that what counterbalances 
the effects of falls in the price of each wrought article sold, is that greater extension 
of demand, which insures a greater aggregate gain than is obtainable when price is 
high, and demand more limited ; and this is so, because no limit can be assigned 
to each man’s consumption of useful wrought wares. As we increase the disposa- 
ble income of each, or enable him to obtain more wrought wares for a less consi- 
deration ; we only bring within his reach goods superior in quality, or quantity , 
to those he could obtain before. The case is very different with regard to food, 
the produce of agriculture ; the demand for this being, of necessity, limited to the 
consumption actually effected by the existing numbers of mankind, which 
consumption remains nearly the same under all circumstances. W bat brought the 
increasing quantity of wrought goods to market, was the certainty that manufac- 
turers were thereby enriching themselves ; whereas the certainty that agricul- 
turalists would impoverish themselves, by suddenly increasing the quantity of food, 
would effectually keep down the supply to the wants of the existing population ; 
and would prevent capital being applied to the land, except gradually, and as 
population increased. If we allow, that demand for food could not increase, while 
the same population only was to be fed ; we must grant, that a fall in the price 
of food could not be accompanied by that extension of demand, which more than 
counterbalanced in the aggregate, the loss on the sale of each specific quantity of 
the article sold ; and if we allow, that the existing population had previously 
brought to market, such quantity of wrought goods as they found most conducive 
to their interests, and which was equivalent, in the estimation of both parties, to 
the quantity of food offered in exchange ; we must grant, that producing a greater 
quantity of food, would only reduce agriculturalists to the necessity of offering, 
in exchange, for any given quantity of wrought goods, a laiger quantity of lood, 
than they could have obtained the same wares for before. — Food, being the 
primary item of wealth, forms the basis on which the whole superstructure of 
enrichment rests ; the population, the wealth, and the revenue, suddenly alters its 
quantity, and the economy of the whole system is at once deranged. In the 
reasonings in the opening of this chapter, I have calculated on an extension of 
cultivation as following the introduction of capital and improvements into agricul- 
ture : this extension must, however, be understood to accompany the progress 
of population, precisely as those extensions of cultivation did, which were 
supposed to lead society to that point in enrichment, at which we took it up, 
when a new progress was opened to it, by the introduction of capital. If wealth 
and population had then made an approximation to the limit to production and 
increase, which the physical circumstances of the country, together with the 
