This is all that I think necessary to be observed at present concerning the
deviations, whether occasional or permanent, of the market price of
commodities from the natural price.

The natural price itself varies with the natural rate of each of its
component parts, of wages, profit, and rent; and in every society this rate
varies according to their circumstances, according to their riches or
poverty, their advancing, stationary, or declining condition. I shall, in
the four following chapters, endeavour to explain, as fully and distinctly
as I can, the causes of those different variations.

First, I shall endeavour to explain what are the circumstances which
naturally determine the rate of wages, and in what manner those
circumstances are affected by the riches or poverty, by the advancing,
stationary, or declining state of the society.

Secondly, I shall endeavour to shew what are the circumstances which
naturally determine the rate of profit ; and in what manner, too, those
circumstances are affected by the like variations in the state of the
society.

Though pecuniary wages and profit are very different in the different
employments of labour and stock ; yet a certain proportion seems commonly to
take place between both the pecuniary wages in all the different employments
of labour, and the pecuniary profits in all the different employments of
stock. This proportion, it will appear hereafter, depends partly upon the
nature of the different employments, and partly upon the different laws and
policy of the society in which they are carried on. But though in many
respects dependent upon the laws and policy, this proportion seems to be
little affected by the riches or poverty of that society, by its advancing,