would be withdrawn from the market.

The machines which produce corn and raw materials on the
contrary, are the gifts of nature, not the works of man; and we
find, by experience, that these gifts have very different
qualities and powers. The most fertile lands of a country, those
which, like the best machinery in manufactures, yield the
greatest products with the least labour and capital, are never
found sufficient to supply the effective demand of an increasing
population. The price of raw produce, therefore, naturally rises
till it becomes sufficiently high to pay the cost of raising it
with inferior machines, and by a more expensive process; and, as
there cannot be two prices for corn of the same quality, all the
other machines, the working of which requires less capital
compared with the produce, must yield rents in proportion to
their goodness.

Every extensive country may thus be considered as possessing
a gradation of machines for the production of corn and raw
materials, including in this gradation not only all the various
qualities of poor land, of which every large territory has
generally an abundance, but the inferior machinery which may be
said to be employed when good land is further and further forced
for additional produce. As the price of raw produce continues to
rise, these inferior machines are successively called into
action; and, as the price of raw produce continues to fall, they
are successively thrown out of action. The illustration here used
serves to show at once the necessity of the actual price of corn
to the actual produce, and the different effect which would
attend a great reduction in the price of any particular