Malthus observes that the comforts of the labouring poor must necessarily depend upon the funds destined for the maintenance of labour, and will generally be in proportion to the rapidity of their increase. The demand for labour, which such increase occasions, will of course raise the value of labour; and till the additional number of hands required are reared, the increased funds will be distributed to the same number of persons as before, and therefore every labourer will live more at his ease. But Adam Smith was wrong when he represented every increase of the revenue or stock of a society, as a proportional increase of these funds. Such surplus stock or revenue will indeed always be considered by the individual possessing it, as an additional fund from which he may maintain more labour; but with regard to the whole country, it will not be an effectual fund for the maintenance of an additional number of labourers, unless part of it be convertible into an additional quantity of provisions; and it will not be so convertible when the increase has arisen merely from the produce of labour, and not from the produce of land. A distinction may in this case occur between the number of hands which the stock of a society could employ and the number which its territory can maintain. “Supposing a nation for a course of years to add what it saved from its yearly revenue to its manufacturing capital solely, and not to its capital employed on land, it is evident that it might grow richer without a power of supporting a greater number of labourers, and therefore without any increase in the real funds for the maintenance of labour. There would, notwithstanding, be a demand for labour, from the extent of manufacturing capital. This demand would of course raise the price of labour; but if the yearly stock of provisions in the country were not increasing this rise would soon turn out merely nominal, as the price of provisions must necessarily rise with it.”