“It is not by the absolute quantity of produce obtained by either class, that we can correctly judge of the rate of profit, rent, and wages, but by the quantity of labour required to obtain that produce.”

Profits might also increase, because improvements might take place in agriculture, or in the implements of husbandry, which would augment the produce with the same cost of production.

If then the prosperity of the commercial classes, will most certainly lead to accumulation of capital, and the encouragement of productive industry; these can by no means be so surely obtained as by a fall in the price of corn.

Neither machines, nor the commodities made by them, rise in real value, but all commodities made by machines fall, and fall in proportion to their durability.

There can be no rise in the value of labour without a fall of profits.

Called an inquiry into the laws which determine the division of the produce.

The variation in the value of money, however great, makes no difference in the rate of profits.

A rise in wages, from an alteration in the value of money, produces a general effect on price, and for that reason it produces no real effect whatever on profits.

As the revenue of the farmer is realized in raw produce, or in the value of raw produce, he is interested, as well as the landlord, in its high exchangeable value, but a low price of produce may be compensated to him by a great additional quantity.

But a tax on luxuries would no other effect than to raise their price. It would fall wholly on the consumer, and could neither increase wages nor lower profits.

For price is everywhere regulated by the return obtained by this last portion of capital, for which no rent whatever is paid.

There can be no greater error then in supposing that capital is increased by non-consumption.

Whenever, then, the usual and ordinary rate of the profits of agricultural stock, and all the outgoings belonging to the cultivation of land, are together equal to the value of the whole produce, there can be no rent.

Money is neither a material to work upon nor a tool to work with.

The wheat bought by a farmer to sow is comparatively a fixed capital to the wheat purchased by a baker to make into loaves.

The price of corn will naturally rise with the difficulty of producing the last portions of it.

Whether a bank lent one million, ten million, or a hundred millions, they would not permanently alter the market rate of interest; they would alter only the value of the money they issued.