means are invented by which the same amount of produce may be procured
without the assistance of any fixed capital, or the consumption of any
seed or material sufficiently valuable to be worth calculating. Let us,
however, suppose that this cannot be done without taking on a number of
additional labourers, equal to those required for producing the seed and
fixed capital; so that the saving shall be only in the profits of the
previous capitalists. Let us, in conformity with this supposition,
assume that in dispensing with the fixed capital and seed, value 60
quarters, it is necessary to take on 40 additional labourers, receiving
a quarter of corn each, as before.

The rate of profit has evidently risen. It has increased from 50 per
cent to 60 per cent. A return of 180 quarters could not before be
obtained but by an outlay of 120 quarters; it can now be obtained by an
outlay of no more than 100.

Here, therefore, is an undeniable rise of profits. Have wages, in the
sense above attached to them, fallen or not? It would seem not.

The produce (180 quarters) is still the result of the same quantity of
labour as before, namely, the labour of 100 men. A quarter of corn,
therefore, is still, as before, the produce of 10/18 of a man's labour
for a year. Each labourer receives, as before, one quarter of corn;
each, therefore, receives the produce of 10\18 of a year's labour of one
man, that is, the same cost of production; each receives 10/18 of the
produce of his own labour, that is, the same proportional wages; and the
labourers collectively still receive the same proportion, namely 10/18,
of the whole produce.

The conclusion, then, cannot be resisted, that Mr. Ricardo's theory is