1830.] 
On Value. 
275 
to which he owes his support, must always be held in determinate esteem, and 
must be possessed of a positive and certain value, whether there happen to be in 
existence or not other products besides that which he then obtains. 
The quantity of food obtained by the naked savage, struggling for subsistence in 
the wilderness, whether in the pursuit of game, or in endeavours at the possession 
of vegetable nourishment, must have been, on the average, merely equal to his 
most urgent wants. Had it been less, he must have perished ; and with the appre- 
ciator of the value of food, the value must have gone also. 
Had it been more, the means of rearing an increasing offspring must have been 
enjoyed ; and, stimulated as he is by the procreative power, numbers must have 
continued on the iticrease, till so much only was again obtainable by each of this 
increased population, as served for supporting the existence of each ; — and, at this 
time, each individual of the increased population, would be found, inevitably hold- 
ing the means of his subsistence in the same esteem, and looking upon them as 
being worthy of the same sacrifice to insure their possession, as those had done 
who formerly constituted the smaller population. 
When capital has come into full employment, and when land has been appropri- 
ated, the remuneration of the lower orders, and the esteem in which that is held 
by which they are supported, must still be the same : for their numbers must still 
be pressing on the means of subsistence available to their use. 
The capitalist may have a great income ; the revenue of this class not being 
like that of the labourers, in a certain proportion to the numbers of the class, but 
to the extent of the productively employed capital of each. There may, therefore, 
be in the hands of each a large stock of food and necessaries ready to be dis- 
tributed amongst the labourers, in return for the produce of their exertions. So 
also may there be large funds in the hands of landholders. But the capitalist 
expends his income in feeding only so many labourers, as tend to keep his personal 
enjoyment at the highest ; and the landlord permits the cultivation of his land 
to such extent only, as leaves the greatest disposable surplus available for his 
peculiar use ; and that in a state too the most readily convertible into items of 
secondary wealth : and the labourers’ numbers pressing, as before, upon that 
amount of subsistence, which these classes can be tempted to bestow, in exchange 
for the results of the utmost exertions of these poor people ; the estimation in 
which that is held, which suffices for the support of a human being, must be then 
as great as it was in the days of pristine rudeness and poverty, and must equally 
command the utmost exertion which a human being is capable of bestowing. 
At either time, when the reward of labour is greater than a mere subsistence, 
the influence of the procreative principle, in causing increase of numbers, must be 
felt : — when it is less, numbers must experience reduction. What supports then the 
lowest individuals of society, whether of savages, or of civilized beings, must ever 
possess a positive and determinate value — a valuo independent of the caprices 
and whims of men ; such value, in fact, as those cannot fail to place on it, who 
must labour their utmost in obtaining it ; and which, in consequence, must, when 
there happens to be other descriptions of products In existence, always be equal to 
that of any other of these products, on which industry is for an equal term en- 
gaged, with the view, in all cases, through the means of the new products, to se- 
curing the acquisition of a sufficient subsistence. 
But it may be objected, that my present reasonings regarding food, and the 
positive value it enjoys, are just, only when population has reached its fullest 
amount— when the world has been fully occupied, which we well know it is not 
and never has been : nay we know, that the most populous countries, are still 
far short of the numbers they may ultimately contain ; whereas other writers are 
employed in the study of what might be passing in a progressive world. 
Although I most fully admit, that the world is not now so populous as* it will 
eventually be ; and that no country, or province, perhaps, contain^ the numbers 
to which it may ultimately yield subsistence ; still I maintain, that the immediate 
influence of a limit to wealth and population must ever have been felt, in every 
country wherein the increases to population were not so great and so rapid as the 
unimpeded influence of the procreative principle would have caused. 
The term requisite for the doubling of population is supposed, on good grounds 
to be less than 25 years. Wherever, then, under the supposition that mankind are 
under the influence of the principles of production and population alone, a greater 
length of time has actually been found to have been occupied in the doublin''- of 
population, there the increase of mankind has actually been counteracted byUie 
operation of such causes, as, for the time being, acted as impediments to the pro- 
