As men are forced to have recourse to inferior soils,the landlord obtains a larger share of the whole produce;and,moreover,since corn also becomes more valuable,will have a larger share of a more valuable product.The question apparently in dispute--whether we should be glad that some land is better than the worst,or sorry because all is not equal to the best--seems rather idle.The real question,however,is whether rent,being a blessing,should be kept up by protection,4or,being a curse,should be brought down by competition?What is the real working of the system?Set the trade free,says Ricardo,and the capital will be withdrawn from the poor land and employed upon manufactures,to be exchanged for the corn of other countries.5The change must correspond to a more advantageous distribution of capital,or it would not be adopted.
The principle involved in this last proposition is,he adds,one of the 'best established in the science of political economy,and by no one is more readily admitted than by Mr.Malthus.'To enforce protection would be,on Malthus's illustration,to compel us to use the 'worst machines,when,at a less expense,we could hire the very best from our neighbours.'6Briefly,then,the landlord's interest is opposed to the national interest,because it enforces a worse distribution of capital.He compels us to get corn from his worst land,instead of getting it indirectly,but in greater quantity,from our spinning-jennies.
For Ricardo,as for Malthus,the ultimate driving force is the pressure of population.The mass of mankind is always struggling to obtain food,and is able to multiply so rapidly as to exhaust any conceivable increase of supplies.The landlord class alone profits.The greater the struggle for supply the greater will be the share of the whole produce which must be surrendered to it.Beyond this,however,lies the further problem which specially occupied Ricardo.
How will the resulting strain affect the relations of the two remaining classes,the labourers and the capitalists?The ultimate evil of protection is the bad distribution of capital.But capital always acts by employing labour.The farmer's capital does not act by itself,but by enabling his men to work,Hence,to understand the working of the industrial machinery,we have to settle the relation of wages and profits.Ricardo states this emphatically in his preface.Rent,profit,and wages,he says,represent the three parts into which the whole produce of the earth is divided.'To determine the laws which regulate this distribution is the principal problem in political economy';and one,he adds,which has been left in obscurity by previous writers.7His investigations are especially directed by the purpose thus defined.He was the first writer who fairly brought under distinct consideration what he held,with reason,to be the most important branch of economical inquiry.
There was clearly a gap in the economic doctrine represented by the Wealth of Nations.Adam Smith was primarily concerned with the theory of the 'market.'He assumes the existence of the social arrangement which is indicated by that phrase.
The market implies a constitution of industrial agencies such that,within it,only one price is possible for a given commodity,or,rather,such that a difference of price cannot be permanent.According to the accepted illustration,the sea is not absolutely level.but it is always tending to a level.8A permanent elevation at one point is impossible.
The agency by which this levelling or equilibrating process is carried out is competition,involving what Smith called the 'higgling of the market.'
The momentary fluctuation,again,supposes the action of 'supply and demand'which,as they vary,raise and depress prices.To illustrate the working of this machinery,to show how previous writers had been content to notice a particular change without following out the collateral results,and had thus been led into fallacies such as that of the 'mercantile system,'was Smith's primary task.
Beyond or beneath these questions lie difficulties,which Smith,though not blind to their existence,treated in a vacillating and inconsistent fashion.Variations of supply and demand cause fluctuations in the price;but what finally determines the point to which the fluctuating prices must gravitate?We follow the process by which one wave propagates another;but there is still the question,What ultimately fixes the normal level?Upon this point Ricardo could find no definite statement in his teacher.'Supply and demand'was a sacred phrase which would always give a verbal answer,or indicate the immediate cause of variations on the surface.Beneath the surface there must be certain forces at work which settle why a quarter of corn 'gravitates'to a certain price;why the landlord can get just so many quarters of corn for the use of his fields;and why the produce,which is due jointly to the labourer and the farmer,is divided in a certain fixed proportion,to settle such points it is necessary to answer the problem of distribution,for the play of the industrial forces is directed by the constitution of the classes which cooperate in the result,Ricardo saw in Malthus's doctrines of rent and of population a new mode of approaching the problem.What was wanted,in the first place,was to systematise the logic adopted by his predecessors.