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 labourer's wages) you are able to determine the question of column sixth-viz. how much the labourer has lost in corn wages; and then, as the money gained to the labourer 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 labourer 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.

CHAPTER V.

PROFITS.

THIS chapter will occupy us for a longer space than the rest; first, because (as a dependency upon rent and wages) it furnishes a sort of commentary on those doctrines; secondly, because, more than any other doctrine, it is liable, on its own account, to popular fallacies.

Price, rent, and wages, having now been developed, we may say, with respect to the law of profits, not so properly that it is deduced from these three principles by Ricardo, as that it deduces itself. Let me not be thought, in saying that, to mean any disparagement of Ricardo's services. Greater cannot be imagined. He it was who first made it possible to deduce wages from rent and therefore to deduce profits from wages. He had so disembarrassed the ground of all perplexities by the time he reached this question of profits, that the true theory rather flowed spontaneously from the conditions, as they had been now explained, than called for any effort of inference. But then the very necessity and inevitableness of this inference, the very possibility

of dispensing with further discoveries, were due exclusively to Ricardo's previous simplifications. Only by having merited so much in former stages, could he have made it possible, even for himself, to merit so little in this.

In one brief formula, it might be said of profits— that they are the leavings of wages: so much will the profit be upon any act of production, whether agricultural or manufacturing, as the wages upon that act permit to be left behind.

But left behind from what? From the price. The price, even of landed produce, splits always into wages and profits; and what the price is predetermines the joint amount for wages and profits. If the price is ten shillings, then by this principle it is asserted-that wages and profits, taken as a whole, cannot exceed ten shillings. (No rise in wages could increase this sum of ten shillings.) But do not the wages and profits as a whole, themselves, on the contrary, predetermine the price? No; that is the old superannuated doctrine. But the new economy has shown that all price is governed by proportional quantity of the producing labour, and by that only. Being itself once settled, then, ipso facto, price settles the fund out of which both wages and profits must draw their separate dividends. Call the price x: that sum, that x, makes up the joint values of wages and profits. Taken together, the two functions of wages and profits will always compose x; cannot be less, cannot be more.

But, if that is true, then it follows that wages and profits vary inversely: whatever the one loses the other gains; and the gain of either can only be through the loss of the other. Neither of the two can gain absolutely or irrespectively of the other: wages being eight shillings, and profits two, then it is possible that profits might rise to three, but only by wages previously falling to seven. Any other rise in profits, such as should leave wages virtually undiminished, could be only an apparent rise through some depreciation in the currency ; and that depreciation, changing any one thing nominally, must change all other things: affecting all apparently, really it would affect none.

This being settled, viz. that any motion or change between wages and profits will always be reciprocal, next comes the question-in which of the two will such a change commence? Is it possible, for instance, that an original change should take place in profits, and that wages should be affected only in a secondary way? No; this is not possible. Any change that can disturb the existing relations between wages and profits, must originate in wages: whatever change may silently take place in profits, always we must view as recording and measuring a previous change in wages.

Hence we are brought to the conclusion—that to wages, and to wages only, we must look for an explanation of all principles which govern either themselves or profits. Ricardo's chapter upon profits is substantially no more than a reiteration of his two chapters upon

wages and rent. It is known already from those chapters, that in all national communities alike, there is the same constant tendency (through the increase of population) to descend upon worse soils. There is a countertendency which holds this primal tendency in check; viz. the gradual elevation of bad soils to the rank of better, by means of improving science. But this antagonist principle acts very unequally in different communities, and in the same community at different periods. Consequently, the tendency to increased cost of food, by continual descent upon worse wheat land, worse barley land, and worse grazing land, is sometimes for a century together proceeding with activity; whilst the counter-tendency, which depends much upon previous improvements in roads, markets, &c., and upon general progress in science, may be altogether torpid. We see, therefore, a natural reason why wages upon the land should, through such a century, continually grow heavier, and the profits, therefore, continually decline. It is only when the antagonist tendency gets into powerful play, or whilst the population happens to be stagnant, that this downward movement is checked. But says the student, by a most natural objection, what has that to do with manufactures? Industry, applied to land, grows dearer, because the declining qualities of the soil oblige the cultivator to employ eleven or twelve men on the worst soil used in the last year of a century; whereas, upon the worst soil used in the first year of that century, there were employed only