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On Mr. Ricardo’s System of Wealth and Value. [Nov, 
culation, when all the prices of an increased quantity of goods are. to be raised. 
When there is a demand for more products, there is more capital in existence to 
employ increased quantities of labour. Corn and wages rise because an increased po- 
pulation is to be fed ; to circulate more commodities more money must be produc- 
ed. We have first an increased demand for gold which must raise its price rela- 
tively to all other products ; and we, at the same time, are contending foi a 
general rise of price, or a rise of all things relatively to gold.” This latter argument 
he applies only to countries importing gold from abroad ; but it holds with equal 
force in the case of countries containing mines, and requiring more gold of ho** 16 
production, to circulate increased quantities of e;oods ; it cuts two ways, although Mr. 
Ricardo does not perceive it. But of what price, I ask, is Mr. Ricardo talking, when 
he makes all these accusations, of people maintaining positive contradiction ? it 
will be answered that he is thinking of gold price alone, This, however, I beg leave 
to deny; for in the case of corn, or the food of labourers, he always, as already 
observed, studies its real price, and its positive value ; the real cost in labour of its 
production, — or in other words, its relation to man, the moral agent; while in the 
case of all other products he views them through the medium of price estimated in 
the commodity gold, or through their relative value. On what grounds, I ask, can 
this be justified ? _ - , - 
On the occurrence of a necessity for resorting to worse lands for the toon or an 
increasing population, the price of food is to rise, and why ? Mr. Ricardo, looking 
to real jirice, answers, because it is the result of increased quantities of labour ; be- 
cause its real price, its positive value, will have risen. On the occurrence of the 
same event, if Mr. Ricardo be asked tlie same question, he now looking to go 
price, or relative value, must answer, there can be no rise of price unless the quan- 
tity of gold be increased, relatively to the goods to be circulated through its means; 
for to say that the price of corn rises, is to say, that the price of gold relatively to 
corn falls ; and the necessity for resorting to worse lands for food, creates no 
necessity for such an increased production of gold as will occasion this tall : more 
gold, on the contrary, will be necessary to circulate all the food obtained both by 
the former extent of cultivation and the new cultivation ; therefore, money price 
will fall. Mr. Ricardo must conclude, then, that with the new demand tor go , 
the price of food would be more likely to fall than to rise, even though it were the 
result of more labour than before ; where then is this rise of the price of food on which 
so many of his conclusions turn ? There can be no better illustration than the 
above, of the consequences of attending only to relative value, when we wish to learn 
the progress of wealth. 
All his arguments, then, against the impossibility of a general rise of price, (and 
it is upon this impossibility that bis whole system is grounded,) are thrown to 
the ground by his own hand, when be admits that the price of products may rise, 
without an increase of gold, greater in proportion, than the increase of the 
products in question. We see now that it is only those who blind themselves 
to all knowledge of the nature and progress of wealth, or of positive values, by 
studying relative values, or price in gold as a commodity, who can with truth be 
accused” of admitting contradictions ; for they actually do maintain, that a rise of 
prices cannot take place, and, at the same time, insist that it can take place ! Adam 
Smith, and all who have followed him, treated, although perhaps not very clearly, 
of the original first price of all things, the actual cost of production in labour ; and 
they treated money price as being the index of real value, not as being estimated in 
gold as a mere commodity ; and they saw clearly that this may undergo change ; 
that at onetime inau may have a small sacrifice to make for his products, and at 
another a great ; and that each of such changes would be a real rise, or fall of prices, 
whatever changes, commodities being adopted as standards of exchangable value, 
might happen to indicate. Mr. Ricardo, in supposing a rise of price with the 
necessity for expending more labour in procuring food, takes his first step in the 
right direction. But dazzled afterwards by the strange appearances presented, while 
viewing wealth through the distorting medium of relative values and commodity 
price, he was struck with the novelty of the exhibition ; and proceeded, ever 
after treating the mirage thus produced, as if it were a reality. 
