The difference between the price of corn and the price of
manufactures, with regard to natural or necessary price, is this;
that if the price of any manufacture were essentially depressed,
the whole manufacture would be entirely destroyed; whereas, if
the price of corn were essentially depressed, the quantity of it
only would be diminished. There would be some machinery in the
country still capable of sending the commodity to market at the
reduced price.

The earth has been sometimes compared to a vast machine,
presented by nature to man for the production of food and raw
materials; but, to make the resemblance more just, as far as they
admit of comparison, we should consider the soil as a present to
man of a great number of machines, all susceptible of continued
improvement by the application of capital to them, but yet of
very different original qualities and powers.

This great inequality in the powers of the machinery employed
in procuring raw produce, forms one of the most remarkable
features which distinguishes the machinery of the land from the
machinery employed in manufactures.

When a machine in manufactures is invented, which will
produce more finished work with less labour and capital than
before, if there be no patent, or as soon as the patent is over,
a sufficient number of such machines may be made to supply the
whole demand, and to supersede entirely the use of all the old
machinery. The natural consequence is, that the price is reduced
to the price of production from the best machinery, and if the
price were to be depressed lower, the whole of the commodity