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As men, like all other animals, naturally multiply in proportion

to the means of their subsistence, food is always more or less in

demand. It can always purchase or command a greater or smaller

quantity of labour, and somebody can always be found who is

willing to do something in order to obtain it. The quantity of

labour, indeed, which it can purchase, is not always equal to

what it could maintain, if managed in the most economical manner,

on account of the high wages which are sometimes given to labour;

but it can always purchase such a quantity of labour as it can

maintain, according to the rate at which that sort of labour is

commonly maintained in the neighbourhood.