Page 516 of 2651

In every state of society, in every stage of improvement, corn is

the production of human industry. But the average produce of

every sort of industry is always suited, more or less exactly, to

the average consumption; the average supply to the average

demand. In every different stage of improvement, besides, the

raising of equal quantities of corn in the same soil and climate,

will, at an average, require nearly equal quantities of labour;

or, what comes to the same thing, the price of nearly equal

quantities; the continual increase of the productive powers of

labour, in an improved state of cultivation, being more or less

counterbalanced by the continual increasing price of cattle, the

principal instruments of agriculture.