stationary, or declining condition, but to remain the same, or very nearly
the same, in all those different states. I shall, in the third place,
endeavour to explain all the different circumstances which regulate this
proportion.

In the fourth and last place, I shall endeavour to shew what are the
circumstances which regulate the rent of land, and which either raise or
lower the real price of all the different substances which it produces.




CHAPTER VIII.

OF THE WAGES OF LABOUR.

The produce of labour constitutes the natural recompence or wages of labour.

In that original state of things which precedes both the appropriation of
land and the accumulation of stock, the whole produce of labour belongs to
the labourer. He has neither landlord nor master to share with him.

Had this state continued, the wages of labour would have augmented with all
those improvements in its productive powers, to which the division of labour
gives occasion. All things would gradually have become cheaper. They would
have been produced by a smaller quantity of labour ; and as the commodities
produced by equal quantities of labour would naturally in this state of
things be exchanged for one another, they would have been purchased likewise
with the produce of a smaller quantity.