Page:Malthus 1823 The Measure of Value.djvu/30

 And this would evidently be the natural price at which the commodity would circulate, and according to which it would exchange with any foreign commodity brought to India.

On the same principle, if for the production of an English commodity, 300 days labour were advanced in fixed capital for a year, and 1500 days labour were consumed on the commodity in the same time, while profits were 1 per cent., the natural value of such commodity, or the conditions of its supply, would be 1500 days labour, with a profit of 10 per cent, upon 1800, which together would equal 1680: and if labour were two shillings a day, the natural price at which the commodity would circulate, and according to which it would exchange with any foreign commodity brought to England, would be £168. This prodigious difference in the natural prices of two commodities in England and India, the natural values of which in each country were nearly the same, could only arise from a difference in the value of money occasioned by the very superior efficiency of English labour in the purchase of the precious metals, owing to the energy, skill, and situation of English labourers and capitalists, compared with those of India. But in estimating this difference in the value of money in England and