Page:Malthus 1823 The Measure of Value.djvu/68

 which they will consent to keep up their actual number; and the main part of the population would suffer severely without any proportionate benefit to the capitalists; because the value of their capitals, measured by the labour which they can command, would shortly be incapable of further increase. In either of these cases a decided check would be given to the progress of wealth, which progress must necessarily be the greatest, when the joint product of the capitalist and labourer, which the state of the land and the skill with which it is worked enable them to obtain, is so divided between them, that in the progress of cultivation and improvement any unnecessary or premature fall either of profits or corn wages is prevented. But this can only be accomplished by a proper proportion of the supply to the demand, that is, by an accumulation so proportioned to the actual consumption of produce by those who can make an effectual demand for it, as to occasion the greatest permanent annual increase in the value of the materials of capital.

The reader of my last work, in which I laid down as my rule, to admit no principles of Political Economy as just which were inconsistent with general experience, will be aware that the conclusions to which I have here shortly ad-