Lectures on Political Economy; Delivered in Trinity and Michaelmas Terms, 1833 (Paperback)

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: LECTURE IV. Gentlemen, ?In comparing the costs of production of different commodities by reference to the labour employed in producing them, it is necessary to attend to the kind as well as the quantity of that labour. Different kinds of labour are of different values. Some kinds occasion a much greater sacrifice of easet ban others do from the labourer. But besides this, which according to the common theory of labour being the only real measure of value, would be the only manner of accounting for the fact that one kind of labour constantly receives a higher remuneration than another kind, there are several other reasons why one sort of labour is naturally more valuable than other sorts, and therefore naturally requires and obtains better Avages. And other things being equal, the natural prices of those commodities on which the more valuable species of labour has been expended willbe higher than that of the commodity which is produced by an equal quantity of the cheaper and less valuable labour. This subject has been so well and perspicuously explained and illustrated by Adam Smith, that subsequent writers are in general content to copy from him. But although he has completely succeeded in all that he attempted, which was to lay down and illustrate the principles which cause an apparent inequality in the wages and advantages of labourers in different employments, yet he has been guilty of a few inadvertancies, which succeeding writers have remarked in his explications of the mode and reason of the operation of those principles; and he has altogether omitted to point out the circumstances which modify those principles, and which according to the condition of the country, will render some of them more or less effectual in producing a difference in the rate of wages in different e...