ther
and further forced for additional produce. As the price of raw produce
continues to rise, these inferior machines are successively called into
action; and, as the price of raw produce continues to fall, they are
successively thrown out of action. The illustration here used serves
to show at once the necessity of the actual price of corn to the actual
produce, and the different effect which would attend a great reduction
in the price of any particular manufacture, and a great reduction in the
price of raw produce.

I hope to be excused for dwelling a little, and presenting to the reader
in various forms the doctrine, that corn in reference to the quantity
actually produced is sold at its necessary price like manufactures,
because I consider it as a truth of the highest importance, which has
been entirely overlooked by the Economists, by Adam Smith, and all those
writers who have represented raw produce as selling always at a monopoly
price.

Adam Smith has very clearly explained in what manner the progress of
wealth and improvement tends to raise the price of cattle, poultry, the
materials of clothing and lodging, the most useful minerals, etc., etc.
compared with corn; but he has not entered into the explanation of the
natural causes which tend to determine the price of corn. He has left
the reader, indeed, to conclude, that he considers the price of corn as
determined only by the state of the mines which at the time supply
the circulating medium of the commercial world. But this is a cause
obviously inadequate to account for the actual differences in the price
of grain, observable in countries at no great distance from each other,
and at nearly the same distance from the mines.

I entirely agree with him, that it is of great use to inquire into the
causes of high price; as, from the result of such inquiry, it may
turn out, that the very circumstance of which we complain, may be the
necessary consequence and the most certain sign of increasing wealth and
prosperity. But, of all inquiries of this kind, none surely can be so
important, or so generally interesting, as an inquiry into the causes
which affect the price of corn, and which occasion the differences in
this price, so observable in different countries.

I have no hesitation in stating that, independently of irregularities
in the currency of a country, [13] and other temporary and accidental
circumstances, the cause of the high comparative money price of