Pagina 158 de 2651

The policy must be as violent as that of Indostan or ancient

Egypt (where every man was bound by a principle of religion to

follow the occupation of his father, and was supposed to commit

the most horrid sacrilege if he changed it for another), which

can in any particular employment, and for several generations

together, sink either the wages of labour or the profits of stock

below their natural rate.

This is all that I think necessary to be observed at present

concerning the deviations, whether occasional or permanent, of

the market price of commodities from the natural price.

The natural price itself varies with the natural rate of each of

its component parts, of wages, profit, and rent; and in every

society this rate varies according to their circumstances,

according to their riches or poverty, their advancing,

stationary, or declining condition. I shall, in the four

following chapters, endeavour to explain, as fully and distinctly

as I can, the causes of those different variations.