Malthus has adroitly used the work of Tooke to support his own economical positions. In a review in the _Quarterly_ for April 1823[654] (pages 214 _seq._) he tries to show that Mr. Tooke’s conclusions as to the high and low prices of the past thirty years prove the following general statements:—First, that values and therefore prices depend on the supply compared with the demand, and are only affected by the labour required to produce goods (_i. e._ by what Ricardo counts the main cause of value) so far as this labour is the main condition of their supply; second, that the supply and demand are chiefly affected by the seasons, and, of the other causes, war may limit the supply but can hardly cause a demand; third, that when demand outruns supply trade is brisk, when supply outruns demand trade is dull; and that, finally, a long-continued deficiency or a long-continued excess of this kind brings with it a fall or a rise in the value of the precious metals.[655] Malthus, however, goes further than Tooke with the Bullion Committee. Though on the bullion question the opposing parties, Bosanquet and Ricardo, seemed to him to be devoted to a preconceived theory,[656] the Report itself was “more free from this error of preconception than any work that had appeared on the subject;”[657] and he agreed with it that there had been a greater rise of prices and of wages at the end of the period of restriction, than could be explained by the bad seasons, and demand for men, and the difference between paper and gold. He is old-fashioned enough to think that even with convertibility there might be over-issue and depreciation, and speculation on a basis of paper. His reasoning on this point is hardly sound. It depends on a misapplication of the axiom that, in the case of necessaries, a very small deficiency in the supply will cause a very great increase in the price,—_e. g._ that wheat may rise from 100 to 200 per cent. when the deficiency of the crops is not more than 15 or 30.[658] The profits of English farmers between 1793 and 1815 must therefore have been enormous; and Malthus, though he loves agriculture above manufacture, has taken account of these high gains of individuals in judging the cause of the Agricultural Interest against the public.[659] But in connection with currency he actually speaks as if those gains were a public advantage; be does not see they were a mere transference of public wealth, not an addition to it. The farmer, he says, is obviously “able to set in motion a much greater quantity of industry than before,” at least till wages have risen. “The specific funds destined for the maintenance of labour, though diminished in quantity, are by this happy provision of nature increased in their efficiency;” labourers get more employment, and there is “a burst of prosperity to the producing classes.”[660]