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SEC. V.]
MEASURES OF VALUE.
105

exportable manufactures at a lower money price than they can be produced in the Netherlands; which, together with some superiority in colonial products, enables England to maintain her exchanges, although she pays a higher money price for her labour, the difference in profits being inconsiderable.

It will be said, perhaps, that the higher money price of corn and labour in England is entirely owing to the corn laws, which prevent the money price of English corn from falling to the price of corn in the Netherlands. It is indeed nearly certain, that if the corn laws were repealed, English labour and the general scale of English prices would be lower. But it is still more certain, that no possible corn laws could prevent the prices of our corn and labour from falling to the level of the rest of Europe, if we possessed no natural or artificial advantages in regard to our exportable commodities. Supposing the price of English common labour to be twenty-pence or two shillings, and of continental labour fourteen or sixteen-pence, each bearing the same relation in each country to manufacturing labour, with no more difference of profits than at present prevails, it is quite obvious, that without some peculiar advantages to balance the price of our labour, we could not possibly maintain our exchanges, and could not, in fact, export a single yard of cloth or calico, till the exchanges had continued against us a sufficient time to raise the value of money and lower the money prices of labour and corn to the level of the principal countries with which we were connected in commerce.

An instance of somewhat a different kind will tend further to illustrate this subject.

It is generally considered that labour is very scarce, and of very high value in the United States of America, and that in consequence the agricultural labourer is paid much higher both in wheat and money than in England. In wheat it is supposed that he earns 18 or 20 quarters in the year, while the English labourer only earns 9 or 10. But is it properly

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