Page:An Essay of the Impolicy of a Bounty on the Exportation of Grain (1804).djvu/47

Rh wealth, going on in a progressive state of improvement, are constantly encreasing the national capital, and continually adding to the general consumption, these causes alone operate to raise the money price of labour and every other commodity, without being in the smallest, degree affected by the money price of corn.” What causes does the author mean? Does he mean an increasing state of industry, population, and wealth; or certain effects which he mentions of these increasing circumstances, namely, an augmentation of capital and an augmentation of consumption? As far as we can gather his meaning from his various details it is this last. An increase of industry, population and wealth produces an increase of capital and an increase of consumption; and an increase of capital and of consumption produces an increase in the price of labour and of commodities. In a country in this progressive state these causes alone he says produce this increase of wages and price, “without being in the smallest degree affected by the money price of corn.” Here the grammatical construction of the author's language bears that the causes he mentions, the increase of: capital and of consumption, are not in the smallest degree affected by the money price of corn; but as this is nonsense, or at least altogether foreign to the purpose, we may suppose he means to say, if he knew how to press himself, that it is the “price of labour and of every other commodity,” which is not in the smallest degree affected by the money price of