Adam Smith appears to have been fully aware, that the correctness of his argument entirely depended on the fact, whether the increase "of the money price of corn, by rendering that commodity more profitable to the farmer, would not necessarily encourage its production." "I answer," he says, "that this might be the case, if the effect of the bounty was to raise the real price of corn, or to enable the farmer, with an equal quantity of it, to maintain a greater number of labourers in the same manner, whether liberal, moderate, or scanty, as other labourers are commonly maintained in his neighbourhood." If nothing were consumed by the labourer but corn, and if the portion which he received, was the very lowest which his sustenance required, there might be some ground for supposing that the quantity paid to the labourer could, under no circumstances, be reduced,--but the money wages of labour sometimes do not rise at all, and never rise in proportion to the rise in the money price of corn, because corn, though an important part, is only a part of the consumption of the labourer. If half his wages were expended on corn, and the other half on soap, candles, fuel, tea, sugar, clothing, &c., commodities on which no rise is supposed to take place, it is evident that he would be quite as well paid with a bushel and a half of wheat, when it was 16_s._ a bushel, as he was with two bushels, when the price was 8_s._ per bushel; or with 24_s._ in money, as he was before with 16_s._ His wages would rise only 50 per cent. though corn rose 100 per cent., and, consequently, there would be sufficient motive to divert more capital to the land, if profits on other trades continued the same as before. But such a rise of wages would also induce manufacturers to withdraw their capitals from manufactures, to employ them on the land; for whilst the farmer increased the price of his commodity 100 per cent., and his wages only 50 per cent., the manufacturer would be obliged also to raise wages 50 per cent., whilst he had no compensation whatever, in the rise of his manufactured commodity, for this increased charge of production; capital would consequently flow from manufactures to agriculture, till the supply would again lower the price of corn to 8_s._ per bushel, and wages to 16_s._ per week; when the manufacturer would obtain the same profits as the farmer, and the tide of capital would cease to set in either direction. This is in fact the mode in which the cultivation of corn is always extended, and the increased wants of the market supplied. The funds for the maintenance of labour increase, and wages are raised. The comfortable situation of the labourer induces him to marry--population increases, and the demand for corn raises its price relatively to other things,--more capital is profitably employed on agriculture, and continues to flow towards it, till the supply is equal to the demand, when the price again falls, and agricultural and