1830 .] 
On Value . 
277 
to consider as tlie ultimate destroyer of profits, and as tlie sole creator of rents 
for landlords? Additional labour, when the inevitable condition of its employ- 
ment was an increased value of the produce, could not, if applied by labourers 
themselves, be repaid by additional returns ; the soil having already been forced to 
feed the greatest numbers whom the capitalists and landlords were interested in 
supporting. Let more labour be applied, and in place of obtaining a greater 
quantity of produce, rendered more valuable by the greater labour of which this 
last increase of food was the result, the effect produced, will be a mere diminution 
of the aggregate, going to the use of the capitalist ; of which the value, depending, 
as it does, on other causes than mere labour, must remain unchanged. Additional 
labour, if applied by capitalists, tending only to their impoverishment, it could 
never be furnished with the requisite advances from them, if we give them credit 
for being rational creatures. And if they did submit to the impoverishment, 
merely that more labourers might be fed, the value of the products, relatively to 
labour, and to what labour could command, would not thereby be increased ; the 
extra labourers, now at work, having had made good to them, by the capitalists, 
the difference between what scanty increase of produce was realized by their ex- 
ertions, and what sufficed for their subsistence. But the case is absurd ; it could 
never occur. 
The real value, then, of articles of the primary description of wealth, is deter- 
mined, not by the quantity of producing labour, but by the quantity of labour 
which the products will command j and the reasons are shortly these,— that they 
enjoy the power of raising up their own demanders ; and that these demanders 
must spring up, in consequence of an inevitable, and ever operating law. Man’s 
necessary wants are as so much, say as 10 ; man’s numbers must increase so 
long as each person, newly coming into being, can obtain 10. But God has or- 
dained, that after man has gained sufficient knowledge in agriculture, each man’s 
labour shall produce, say 15, or 20. The consequence is, that poor men, coming 
to no inheritance but their naked arms, the vast majority of mankind, esteeming 
10 as a sufficient recompense for their labour, will be ready to give for the pos- 
sesion of 10, their utmost exertion ; and for this exertion, although, in agriculture, 
actually producing 15, or 20, they will only be recompensed by the receipt of 10 ; 
and whatever other article of the secondary description of wealth, which is actu- 
ally in demand, and which is the product of an equal exertion, will be equivalent 
to 10 also ; because that will necessarily be the utmost which so much unaided 
labour can produce. 
It is worthy of observation, as a consequence of the above reasonings, that where 
the principle of reproduction and increase co-updates with industry so powerfully, 
as to give off, not only what will feed the labourer, but something besides, there 
must, of necessity, be attached to this produce a greater value, than the products of 
mere industry can enjoy ; and this superior value will be in exact proportion to 
the greatness of the excess realized, beyond what supports the agricultural labour- 
ers. 0 If the labourers required 10, and the net reproduction procurable from the 
co-operation of their labour were 20, then the produce must be of double the value 
of any product of equal labour, in which the reproductive, principle did not co-ope- 
rate. If the net production were 30, then the value of the produce tvould be three 
times as great, and so on, as that of the mere labour which had been employed, 
or any of its results in secondary wealth, which happened to be in effectual de- 
mand • and if the net reproduction were but 10, then the value of the labour, or of 
its unaided results, would be as great as that of the products of reproduction. But 
in this last case there could be no secondary wealth whatever — no products of 
mere labour ; all that was given off, for the support of mankind, being merely 
sufficient for the subsistence of the agricultural class, there could then be no- 
thing for the support of any other class, 
What is available for the support of other classes besides agriculturalists, is great 
in proportion as the influence of the principle of reproduction and increase after its 
kind is great in food ; and the difference in the value of secondary wealth, the 
product of mere industry, and of primary wealth, the result of industry in 
conjunction with the reproductive principle, will be great in the same proportion. 
Wherever, then, separate classes have grown up in society ; and where men 
have been found enjoying other products than mere food ; there, a difference 
must have existed between the value of food, and of any product of mere labour: 
and it will, 1 believe, be allowed, that this must have been the case in every 
society, which had made any progress whatever in civilization. What then 
becomes of the modern theories respecting rent,— that it proceeds from the 
