commonly considered as the earnings of his labour. Both rent and profit are,
in this case, confounded with wages.

As in a civilized country there are but few commodities of which the
exchangeable value arises from labour only, rent and profit contributing
largely to that of the far greater part of them, so the annual produce of
its labour will always be sufficient to purchase or command a much greater
quantity of labour than what was employed in raising, preparing, and
bringing that produce to market. If the society were annually to employ all
the labour which it can annually purchase, as the quantity of labour would
increase greatly every year, so the produce of every succeeding year would
be of vastly greater value than that of the foregoing. But there is no
country in which the whole annual produce is employed in maintaining the
industrious. The idle everywhere consume a great part of it; and, according
to the different proportions in which it is annually divided between those
two different orders of people, its ordinary or average value must either
annually increase or diminish, or continue the same from one year to
another.




CHAPTER VII.

OF THE NATURAL AND MARKET PRICE OF COMMODITIES.

There is in every society or neighbourhood an ordinary or average rate, both
of wages and profit, in every different employment of labour and stock. This
rate is naturally regulated, as I shall shew hereafter, partly by the
general circumstances of the society, their riches or poverty, their