328 
On Mr. Ricardo's System 
[Nor. 
changes which are known to take place in the incomes of various classes, as socie- 
ty advances in improvement, it behoved him to proceed, and to force a seeming 
connexion which does not really exist. The invariability of relative va 1 e in pro- 
ducts establishes, that products, in their relations to each other, \ 1 remain 
precisely as they were before ; and not that men will be in the same cycumstan- 
ces with regard to wealth as before : but he wishes to make it appear that no 
classes of men will be affected by the change except one ; and that this one shall 
suffei impoverishment, while all the others escape 1 To effect the object lor which 
he was writing, he was necessitated to make all this appear ; and that he succeed- 
ed, most men have been forward to allow. 
All products may equally become the result of more labour, by a general visita- 
tion, for instance, whence all labour should he rendered less effective. They will 
all, therefore, under these circumstances, cost more of the “ first price, “ the ori- 
ginal purchase money of all things •>” and will, consequently, be less within the 
reach of all classes than before : and yet their relative values estimated in gold, if 
it were merely a commodity ; or in hats, or shoes, or coats ? might be unchanged. 
In this case, would the existence of two classes concerned in production, of a class 
of capitalists, anda class of labourers, be required to shield mankind from general im- 
poverishment ? Yet this is, in effect, what Mr. Ricardo lays down as being inevita- 
ble under all circumstances. Because relative prices, estimated in products, can- 
not be altered, when all products are equally affected by any change ; therefore , 
when there are two classes concerned in production, the capitalist alone must be 
impoverished, whenever a necessity occurs for going to a greater expense in obtain- 
ing all the products requisite for human consumption 1 To me there appears no 
possible connexion between the premises, and this conclusion ? and that it is such 
an instance of inconsequent reasoning as is rarely to be met with. 1 do not mean 
to say, there are no circumstances in which capitalists may find it to their interest 
to keep production at its former amount, by taking on themselves the payment 
of an increase of wages, or any other increase in the necessary cost of production. 
But I maintain, that if this should happen to be the case, it would not be because 
of the invariability of relative value ; but because the capitalists found their en- 
richment to be greater, while they kept all their former labourers at work, even 
at higher wages than before, than if they discharged any number of them ; and 
thus by reducing production, reduced also the number of sales, by the aggregate 
amount of which, actually effected, they were most greatly benefitted. 
In this case relative values might remain unchanged, and the rise of cost in pro- 
duction, from whatever cause proceeding, might be entirely paid by a correspond- 
ing fall of profits. But to attribute the fall of profits to the Invariability of relative 
value would be mistaking a collateral effect for a cause. 
At any rate such effects could never be produced under the circumstances Mr. 
Ricardo supposes, when, from the pressing of production, and population against 
the limits assigned to them, a necessity had arisen for resorting to inferior lands to 
obtain food sufficient for the growing population ; and when production, in all its 
branches, must be full, and pressing on the limit assigned to it by the physical 
circumstances of the country, and the existing knowledge of productive arts. 
It may be said, that I do not state the argument fairly ; that I ought first to ex- 
plain what Mr. Ricardo takes for granted, namely, that a rise of wages is quite a 
different thing from any other increase in the cost of production. When the food 
of the labourer is ohtaiued by a greater expenditure of labour, there is not, he as- 
sumes, an increased quautity of labour expended in any subsequent product of that 
labour, the products are the results of no more labour than before ; they are only 
the result of more highly paid labour ; and therefore the increased cost of obtain- 
ing products, when a general rise of wages takes place, is very different from any 
other increased cost of obtaining products. But as 1 shall hereafter shew, more 
in detail, this is a mere unwarrantable assumption ; and if it can be proved that a 
general increase in the cost of producing goods, may, in the instance ol increased 
wages, be prevented affecting the consumers, because there can then be no change 
of relative value ; I conceive, that the same arguments must be applicable to every 
general increase of the cost of production ; whether that happen to fall directly on 
product, as it would, in the event of all men’s labour becoming less effective ; oi 
whether it fall on products indirectly, as in the case which Mr. Ricardo supposes, 
where the cost of feeding the labourers has been increased, through whose means 
the products are obtained. Unless he can establish it as an axiom in his science, 
applicable to all general rises in the cost of production, that these rises cannot 
affect consumers, he has done nothing ; for we cannot allow him to blow hot, and 
to blow cold, with the saute breath. 
