its products; though, in this case, food and raw materials would
have been evidently scarcer than at present, and the land might
have been, in the same manner, monopolized by particular owners;
vet it is quite clear, that neither rent, nor any essential
surplus produce of the land in the form of high profits, could
have existed.

It is equally clear, that if the necessaries of life the most
important products of land - had not the property of creating an
increase of demand proportioned to their increased quantity, such
increased quantity would occasion a fall in their exchangeable
value. However abundant might be the produce of a country, its
population might remain stationary And this abundance, without a
proportionate demand, and with a very high corn price of labour,
which would naturally take place under these circumstances, might
reduce the price of raw produce, like the price of manufactures,
to the cost of production.

It has been sometimes argued, that it is mistaking the
principle of population, to imagine, that the increase of food,
or of raw produce alone, can occasion a proportionate increase of
population. This is no doubt true; but it must be allowed, as has
been justly observed by Adam Smith, that 'when food is provided,
it is comparatively easy to find the necessary clothing and
lodging. And it should always be recollected, that land does not
produce one commodity alone, but in addition to that most
indispensable of all commodities - food - it produces also the
materials for the other necessaries of life; and the labour
required to work up these materials is of course never excluded
from the consideration.(6)