It very rarely happens that the nominal price of labour
universally falls, but we well know that it frequently remains
the same, while the nominal price of provisions has been
gradually increasing. This is, in effect, a real fall in the
price of labour, and during this period the condition of the
lower orders of the community must gradually grow worse and
worse. But the farmers and capitalists are growing rich from the
real cheapness of labour. Their increased capitals enable them to
employ a greater number of men. Work therefore may be plentiful,
and the price of labour would consequently rise. But the want of
freedom in the market of labour, which occurs more or less in all
communities, either from parish laws, or the more general cause
of the facility of combination among the rich, and its difficulty
among the poor, operates to prevent the price of labour from
rising at the natural period, and keeps it down some time longer;
perhaps till a year of scarcity, when the clamour is too loud and
the necessity too apparent to be resisted.

The true cause of the advance in the price of labour is thus
concealed, and the rich affect to grant it as an act of
compassion and favour to the poor, in consideration of a year of
scarcity, and, when plenty returns, indulge themselves in the
most unreasonable of all complaints, that the price does not
again fall, when a little rejection would shew them that it must
have risen long before but from an unjust conspiracy of their
own.

But though the rich by unfair combinations contribute
frequently to prolong a season of distress among the poor, yet no