Pagina 164 di 2651

Though it required five times the quantity of other goods to

purchase it, it would require only half the quantity of labour

either to purchase or to produce it. The acquisition, therefore,

would be twice as easy as before.

But this original state of things, in which the labourer enjoyed

the whole produce of his own labour, could not last beyond the

first introduction of the appropriation of land and the

accumulation of stock. It was at an end, therefore, long before

the most considerable improvements were made in the productive

powers of labour; and it would be to no purpose to trace further

what might have been its effects upon the recompence or wages of

labour.

As soon as land becomes private property, the landlord demands a

share of almost all the produce which the labourer can either

raise or collect from it. His rent makes the first deduction from

the produce of the labour which is employed upon land.