Page:An Essay of the Impolicy of a Bounty on the Exportation of Grain (1804).djvu/51

Rh that period, the wages of the labourer will be only raised one third in money. They will not be raised in the smallest degree in reality. The quantity of maintenance which he can command will still be the same, that is the lowest capable of preserving the number of labourers from being reduced by starvation. But if any one is capable of supposing that a growing demand for labour, capable of raising the real price of labour one third, can be prevented from raising that price at all, only by a rise in the price of provisions, I do not think it necessary to spend time to instruct him.

The whole of this miserable attempt has been produced by the incapacity of the author to attend to the distinction between the money price and the real price of labour. Whoever is capable of understanding the effects of prosperity that it is of a growing demand, for labour upon the price of labour, must see that is produces effects upon the real price of labour, that is upon the quantity of maintenance which the labourer can command. If therefore the money price of that maintenance has risen one third, while the rate of his wages has risen one third, the money price of his labour must have risen not one third only but two thirds; “nothing” says Mr. Burke (Thoughts and Details on Scarcity) “is such an enemy to accuracy of judgment as a coarse discrimination.”

It is unnecessary to pursue this subject any farther. It now appears that the money price of all the raw materials produced in the country, and also