Page:Malthus 1823 The Measure of Value.djvu/41

 when the tabpurer earns a greater or a smaller qaantity of money or necessaries, it is not the value of labour which varies, but, as Adam Smith says, "it is the goods which are cheap in the one case and dear in the other."

If labour alone, without any capital, were employed in procuring the fruits of the earth, the' greater facility of procuring one sort of them compared with another, would not, it is acknowledged, alter the value of labour, or the exchangeable value of the whole produce obtained by a given quantity of exertion. We should, without hesitation, allow that the difference was in the cheapness or dearness of the produce, not of the labour.

In the same manner it will follow, that when capital and profits enter into the computation of value, and the demand for labour varies, the high or low reward of labour estimated in produce, implies a change in the value of the produce, not a change in the value of the labour.

If the increased reward of the labourer takes place without an increase of produce, this cannot happen without a fall of profits, as it is a self-evident truth, that given the quantity of the produce to be divided between labour and profits, the greater the portion of it which goes to labour the. less will be left for profits. What then will be the result? It will appear