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If it did, more land and more industry would soon be employed to

increase their quantity.

When the price of cattle, for example, rises so high, that it is

as profitable to cultivate land in order to raise food for them

as in order to raise food for man, it cannot well go higher. If

it did, more corn land would soon be turned into pasture. The

extension of tillage, by diminishing the quantity of wild

pasture, diminishes the quantity of butcher's meat, which the

country naturally produces without labour or cultivation; and, by

increasing the number of those who have either corn, or, what

comes to the same thing, the price of corn, to give in exchange

for it, increases the demand. The price of butcher's meat,

therefore, and, consequently, of cattle, must gradually rise,

till it gets so high, that it becomes as profitable to employ the

most fertile and best cultivated lands in raising food for them

as in raising corn.