vertence, Ricardo is here found in a painful collusion with the most hateful of anarchists.

Now remains one sole task. The novice has seen generally, that the laborer and the capitalist are affected by changes in rent; it remains to ask, In what exact proportions? Although every fresh projection of rent is carried off "neat" and entire by its own class of owners, and therefore it might be supposed that this class would go off, leaving the two other classes to settle their dividends undisturbed by the action of rent, that is not so. Every fresh pulse of rent causes a new arrangement even for that which rent leaves behind; and this new arrangement more and more favors wages at the expense of profits. One short explanation will make this clear, and finish the whole development.

Looking back to Ricardo's table, let us take the case c.40 And, in order to begin at the beginning, what is the principium movendi? Where arises the initial movement? It arises in the fact that, by some descent upon a worse soil, a second separation of rent has taken place. In the first descent, marked в, there had occurred a separation of 10 quarters for rent; in the second descent, marked c, a separation (upon the same soil) of 20 quarters has occurred for the same purpose.

Here pause for now comes the screw which moves the whole machine. The produce of the soil under discussion is assumed always to be the same total quantity, — viz. 180 quarters; for the reader has been told that it is one and the same soil concerned in all the five cases. Consequently, when 10 quarters were made disposable for rent, the remainder was 170; when 20 are taken, the remainder is 160. Now, as

When the original move had been made, wheat was selling at eighty shillings a quarter: it rose under this first move (B) to eighty-four shillings and eightpence. And why? because 170 is to 180 as £4 is to £4 4s. 8d. But when another move (c) has abstracted from the total crop of 180 quarters not less than 20 for rent, by a rule-of-three proportion we see that the price will rise to ninety shillings.

Step the Second.— Next, after this case of price, comes the case of wages. How it is that Ricardo would himself have explained the process of adjustment (as sketched on his own table) between wages and the changes caused by rent, perhaps nobody can say. My explanation is this, which must (I presume) be sound, as it coincides in the arithmetical result with his. Look down the column of prices for wheat, and uniformly the difference between any case, as c and the original case A, must be halved. Thus the half of ten shillings (the difference between c and a) is five. Then, because each laborer's original share had been six quarters, multiply six by five shillings, and the product is thirty shillings. This, for ten laborers, will make, collectively, £15; and so much additional money wages, viz. £15, — must be paid to the aggregate share of wages under case c, compared with case A. Accordingly, in the column of "wages in money," you see that, having had £240 in case A, the ten laborers will have £255 in case c. Again, for a similar reason,11 in case D, the price of wheat per quarter is sixteen shillings more than in case A. Half sixteen shillings is eight shillings; and multiplying the original quarters of each laborer, viz. six, by eight, you have forty-eight shillings as the additional sum for each laborer, £24 therefore as the aggregate addition for ten laborers. Accordingly, by the same column of "wages in money," you see that the share of wages on case D, as compared with case a, has risen from £240 to £264.

41

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Step the Third, - Remains to ask, what will be the share left for profits? When abstracting Ricardo's law of profits, I said, by way of condensing the truth in a brief formula,-"Profits are the leavings of wages:" meaning, that whatever addition is assigned to wages by the law controlling them, must be taken from profits; for, if not, whence can it come? What other source is available? Here (as you see) the initial movement, by abstracting 20 quarters from the land produce for rent, has determinately forced on another movement, - viz. a change in wages. This has given £15 extra to the ten workmen: but where was that £15 obtained? If you say it was obtained from the new price of wheat, now much enhanced, I reply,No: that is quite impossible. First, from the fact, — the price of wheat is now 10s. a quarter more than it was under case A. This extra sum upon 180 quarters makes exactly £90. But £90 is the very sum now paid for rent; the 20 quarters for rent, at £4 10s., amount to £90. Consequently, all that is gained in the new money price of wheat goes away upon rent. Secondly, the same thing may be shown à priori. For what is it that has raised the price of wheat? The cause of that new price is the inferiority of some new soil not particularly noticed in Ricardo's table, except in its effects. This worse soil, which for that reason regulates the price upon all soils, could not furnish the same produce of 180 quarters, except at a higher cost. That higher cost appears to be £90. So far only, and by this process, has the price of wheat been raised; but not through any rise of wages, which rise, besides, is consequential and posterior to the rise in wheat, and cannot therefore have been causative to the new price of wheat. Not to insist again, at this point, on the doctrine of Ricardo, so fully demonstrated, that no change in price can ever be effected by a change in wages. In the in

stance now before us, the £15 extra must be paid from some quarter; but it is doubly demonstrated that it cannot have been paid by the new price, -i. e. by consumers. It remains, therefore, that it must be paid out of profits; for no other fund exists. And accordingly, by looking into the column of money profits, you see that, in case c, these profits have sunk from £480 to £465. In other words, the 30s. per man paid extra to the laborer, making £15 for the ten laborers, has been obtained entirely at the cost of profits. The laborers obtain £15 more; but the capitalist is left with £15 less.

Thus, finally, we read off the table of Ricardo into its true interpretation. We are able to construct it into a scientific sense for the understanding. The last column to

the right hand, I must observe, simply adds to the invariable sum of £720, always disposable for profit and wages, the new sum obtained by a new price of wheat for rent. For example, in case C, where 20 quarters become disposable for rent, and therefore, in money, £90 under the new price of wheat, add this £90 to the old £720, and the total money produce of the land under c is £810. So again, under E, where the price of wheat has risen to £5 2s. 10d. per quarter, the total money value of rent, now claiming 40 quarters of the 180, will be £205 13s. 4d.; and this sum, added to the old £720, makes (as we see) £925 13s. 4d. But now, if we strike out this final column on the right hand, which is simply an arithmetical register or summation of values travelling along with the expansions of rent, we shall have seven columns remaining, — viz. one for the prices of wheat, two for rent, two for profits, and two for wages. And the Ariadne's thread for passing along the labyrinth is briefly this: that the second column is a pure assumption, and justly so, where you are entitled to take any quantities you please for a basis. From this sec

ond column you take your start; and, by a comparison derived from this assumption of wheat rent, in a way already explained, (viz. by stating the remainder of wheat produce, suppose 150 quarters after paying rent, against the invariable total of wheat produce, – - viz. 180 quarters,) you determine to a fraction the new price per quarter of wheat. This known, next, by a rule which seems arbitrary, you learn precisely the new amount (as in column seventh) that will now be required for money wages. But, because the new price of wheat is also known, out of that (combined with the money addition to the laborer's wages) you are able to determine the question of column sixth,— viz. how much the laborer has lost in corn wages; and then, as the money gained to the laborer measures the money lost to the capitalist, easily you settle the question of column fifth (money profits) out of column seventh, (money wages.) Next, through the price of wheat, (known in column first and by column second) you ascertain readily the question of column fourth; i. e. of wheat profits. There remains only column third, (the money value of rent.) But this is obviously nothing more than a multiplication of column second, as to any given item, by the corresponding item in column first. As to the objections against the rule for deriving the new rate of money wages, that it seems to be arbitrary, I fancy that Ricardo referred to a basis assumed in the chapter on wages, which represents the laborer as originally requiring one half of his wages for food or for wheat; so that the increase in money wages acts only on that half. To the latter part of that chapter, in my own account of it, I therefore refer the reader.