It must be remarked here that on this question, as on that of rent, Malthus is less pessimistic than Ricardo. Far from maintaining that every rise in wages of necessity involves an excess of population and a consequent lowering of wages, Malthus believed that a capacity for forethought, which constitutes the most efficacious check upon the operation of blind instinct, may be engendered even among the working classes, and that a high standard of life once secured may become permanent. All this may be very true, but the reasoning involves us in a vicious circle. In order that a high rate of wages may produce its beneficial effects it must first of all be established, but how can it possibly be established as long as the working classes remain steeped in the misery caused by not exercising this forethought? An exit from the circle is only possible by recalling the fact that the market wage incessantly oscillates about the natural wage according to the exigencies of demand and supply. If this accidental rise could be prolonged a little it might become permanent and modify the workman’s standard of life.[347] Such is the law of wages, which has long since passed into an axiom, and whose authority is invoked in every discussion on social reform. To every socialistic scheme, to every proposal for social reform, there is always one answer: “There is no means of improving the lot of the worker except by limiting the number of his children. His destiny is in his own hands.”[348] Latter-day socialism, commencing with Lassalle, makes a careful study of the law, and returns to the charge against the existing economic order by affirming that in no respect is it a natural law, but merely a result of the capitalist _régime_, upon which it supplies an eloquent commentary. We must not fail to note that in the Ricardian theory there is not what we can exactly call antagonism between the landed proprietor and the proletarian. To the latter it is a matter of indifference whether rents be high or low, for his money wages move in sympathy with the price of corn, but his real wages never change. The proprietor on his side is equally indifferent to rising or falling wages, for they never affect his receipts. His rent, as a matter of fact, is determined by the quantity of labour employed on the least fertile lands, but this quantity of labour has nothing to do with the rate of wages. The landlords are the grandees of a different order.[349]