manufacture, and a great reduction in the price of raw produce.

I hope to be excused for dwelling a little, and presenting to
the reader in various forms the doctrine, that corn in reference
to the quantity actually produced is sold at its necessary price
like manufactures, because I consider it as a truth of the
highest importance, which has been entirely overlooked by the
Economists, by Adam Smith, and all those writers who have
represented raw produce as selling always at a monopoly price.

Adam Smith has very clearly explained in what manner the
progress of wealth and improvement tends to raise the price of
cattle, poultry, the materials of clothing and lodging, the most
useful minerals, etc., etc. compared with corn; but he has not
entered into the explanation of the natural causes which tend to
determine the price of corn. He has left the reader, indeed, to
conclude, that he considers the price of corn as determined only
by the state of the mines which at the time supply the
circulating medium of the commercial world. But this is a cause
obviously inadequate to account for the actual differences in the
price of grain, observable in countries at no great distance from
each other, and at nearly the same distance from the mines.

I entirely agree with him, that it is of great use to inquire
into the causes of high price; as, from the result of such
inquiry, it may turn out, that the very circumstance of which we
complain, may be the necessary consequence and the most certain
sign of increasing wealth and prosperity. But, of all inquiries
of this kind, none surely can be so important, or so generally
interesting, as an inquiry into the causes which affect the price