Page:Malthus 1823 The Measure of Value.djvu/12

 be denominated their natural value, in contradistinction to their natural price.

Of these three conditions of supply, or elements of natural value, the two first are obviously the most important. They are not only the sole conditions of supply in those early stages of society before the appropriation of land has taken place, but they continue to be so in reference to large classes of objects in the most advanced stages of improvement; and it is now generally acknowledged that even the main vegetable food of an improving country, which is the foundation of wages, must necessarily be of the same value as that part of the produce which is almost exclusively resolvable into wages and profits, and pays very little rent. We cannot therefore essentially err in assuming for the present that the natural value of objects in their more simple forms is composed of labour and profits, and the effect of any portion of rent, or of other ingredients which are sometimes added to these elements, may be allowed for subsequently.