Page:Malthus 1823 The Measure of Value.djvu/18

 number of deer which might have cost exactly the same quantity of accumulated and immediate labour to bring to market, the canoe would be seventy or eighty per cent, of greater value; and on the fall of profits from forty or fifty per cent, to ten per cent, in the progress of society, an object of this kind might fall in value sixty or seventy per cent, compared with such objects as deer or fish, without any difference in the quantity of labour employed upon either.

It is observed by Adam Smith that corn is an annual crop, butchers' meat a crop which requires four or five years to grow; and consequently, if we compare two quantities of corn and beef which are of equal exchangeable value, it is certain that a difference of three or four additional years profit at fifteen per cent, upon the capital employed in the production of the beef would, exclusively of any other considerations, make up in value for a much smaller quantity of labour, and thus we might have two commodities of the same exchangeable value, while the accumulated and immediate labour of the one was forty or fifty per cent, less than that of the other. This is an event of daily occurrence in reference to a vast mass of the most important commodities in the country; and if profits were to fall from fifteen per cent.