But in this state of things commodities would cease to exchange with each other according to the quantity of labour employed upon them. Some commodities, on which the same quantity of accumulated and immediate labour had been employed, would be of a different exchangeable value, on account of the different quantity of profits which had entered into their composition; while others, on which different quantities of accumulated and immediate labour had been employed, might be of the same exchangeable value, on account of the greater quantity of profits of which they were composed being balanced by the smaller quantity of labour advanced to produce them. In the earliest stages of society accumulations of capital are very rare, and profits may be extremely high, perhaps forty or fifty per cent. If under these circumstances the construction of a war canoe were to take two years before it were fit for use, it is evident that its value in exchange would be prodigiously enhanced by such profits. Compared with a number of deer which might have cost exactly the same quantity of accumulated and immediate labour to bring to market, the canoe would be seventy or eighty per cent. of greater value; and on the fall of profits from forty or fifty per cent. to ten per cent. in the progress of society, an object of this kind might fall in value sixty or seventy per cent. compared with such objects as deer or fish, without any difference in the quantity of labour employed upon either. It is observed by Adam Smith that corn is an annual crop, butchers’ meat a crop which requires four or five years to grow; and consequently, if we compare two quantities of corn and beef which are of equal exchangeable value, it is certain that a difference of three or four additional years profit at fifteen per cent. upon the capital employed in the production of the beef would, exclusively of any other considerations, make up in value for a much smaller quantity of labour, and thus we might have two commodities of the same exchangeable value, while the accumulated and immediate labour of the one was forty or fifty per cent. less than that of the other. This is an event of daily occurrence in reference to a vast mass of the most important commodities in the country; and if profits were to fall from fifteen per cent. to eight per cent. the value of beef compared with corn would fall above twenty per cent.