Page:Malthus 1823 The Measure of Value.djvu/23

 the average interval between the advance of such wages and the period when the commodity could be brought to sale were a year, and profits were 20 per cent, the price of the commodity would be £12, while the price of a commodity which had cost the same quantity of labour of the same kind, and could be brought to market immediately, would be only £10. And it is equally certain, that, if putting money or any other medium of exchange out of the question, we had estimated the profits for a year upon the advances of the hundred days labour actually employed, we should obtain a quantity of labour which, compared with the labour employed on the commodity sold immediately, would be in the proportion of 120 to 100, and expressing the relative conditions of supply, would accurately measure the rate at which the two commodities obtained under these different circumstances would exchange with each other.

It appears, then, that in the same country, and at the same time, the exchangeable value of those commodities which can be resolved into labour and profits alone, would be accurately measured by the quantity of labour which would result from adding to the accumulated and immediate labour actually worked up in them the varying amount of the profits on all