A recurrence to a better monetary system, it is said, though highly desirable, tends to give a temporary discouragement to accumulation and industry, by depressing the commercial part of the community, and is the effect of a fall of prices: Mr Malthus supposes that such an effect will be produced by the fall of the price of corn. If the observation made by Hume were well founded, still it would not apply to the present instance: -- for every thing that the manufacturer would have to sell, would be as dear as ever: it is only what he would buy that would be cheap, namely, corn and labour by which his gains would be increased. I must again observe, that a rise in the value of money lowers all things; whereas a fall in the price of corn, only lowers the wages of labour, and therefore raises profits.
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.
I cannot agree with Mr Malthus in his approbation of the opinion of Adam Smith, "that no equal quantity of productive labour employed in manufactures, can ever occasion so great a re-production as in agriculture." I suppose that he must have overlooked the term ever in this passage, otherwise the opinion is more consistent with the doctrine of the Economists, than with those which he has maintained; as he has stated, and I think correctly, that in the first settling of a new country, and in every stage of its improvement, there is a portion of its capital employed on the land, for the profits of stock merely, and which yields no rent whatever. Productive labour employed on such land never does in fact afford so great a reproduction, as the same productive labour employed in manufactures.
The difference is not indeed great, and is voluntarily relinquished, on account of the security and respectability which attends the employment of capital on land. In the infancy of society, when no rent is paid, is not the re-production of value in the coarse manufactures, and in the implements of husbandry with a given capital, at least as great as the value which the same capital would afford if employed on the land?
This opinion indeed is at variance with all the general doctrines of Mr Malthus, which he has so ably maintained in this as well as in all his other publications. In the "Inquiry,"speaking of what I consider a similar opinion of Adam Smith, he observes, "I cannot, however, agree with him in thinking that all land which yields food must necessarily yield rent. The land which is successively taken into cultivation in improving countries, may only pay profits and labour. A fair profit on the stock employed, including, of course, the payment of labour, will always be a sufficient inducement to cultivate." The same motives will also induce some to manufacture goods, and the profits of both in the same stages of society will be nearly the same.
In the course of these observations, I have often had occasion to insist, that rent never falls without the profits of stock rising. If it suit us to day to import corn rather than grow it, we are solely influenced by the cheaper price. If we import the portion of capital last employed on the land, and which yielded no rent, will be withdrawn; rent will fall and profits rise, and another portion of capital employed on the land will come under the same deion of only yielding the usual profits of stock.
If corn can be imported cheaper than it can be grown on this rather better land, rent will again fall and profits rise, and another and better deion of land will now be cultivated for profits only. In every step of our progress, profits of stock increase and rents fall, and more land is abandoned: besides which, the country saves all the difference between the price at which corn can be grown, and the price at which it can be imported, on the quantity we receive from abroad.
Mr Malthus has considered, with the greatest ability, the effect of a cheap price of corn on those who contribute to the interest of our enormous debt. I most fully concur in many of his conclusions on this part of the subject. The wealth of England would, I am persuaded, be considerably augmented by a great reduction in the price of corn, but the whole money value of that wealth would be diminished. It would be diminished by the whole difference of the money value of the corn consumed, -- it would be augmented by the increased exchangeable value of all those commodities which would be exported in exchange for the corn imported. The latter would, however, be very unequal to the former; therefore the money value of the commodities of England would, undoubtedly, be considerably lowered.
But, though it is true, that the money value of the mass of our commodities would be diminished, it by no means follows, that our annual revenue would fall in the same degree. The advocates for importation ground their opinion of the advantages of it on the conviction that the revenue would not so fall. And, as it is from our revenue that taxes are paid, the burthen might not be really augmented.
Suppose the revenue of a country to fall from ten to nine millions, whilst the value of money altered in the proportion of ten to eight, such country would have a larger neat revenue, after paying a million from the smaller, than it would have after paying it from the larger sum.
That the stockholder would receive more in real value than what he contracted for, in the loans of the late years, is also true; but, as the stockholders themselves contribute very largely to the public burthens, and therefore to the payment of the interest which they receive, no inconsiderable proportion of the taxes would fall on them; and, if we estimate at its true value the additional profits made by the commercial class, they would still be great gainers, notwithstanding their really augmented contributions.
