for the effect of inventions and discoveries is to reduce the price of commodities; and all that part of the price which has been annihilated, and which represents the share invention has in production, evidently renders the product gratuitous to that extent. All that remains to be paid for is the human labour, the immediate labour, /and it is paid for without reference to the result of the invention, at least when that invention has passed through the cycle I have just described—the cycle which it is designed to pass through. I send for a tradesman to my house; he comes and brings his saw with him; I pay him two shillings for his day's work, and he saws me twenty-five boards. Had the saw not been invented, he would probably not have made out to furnish me with one, and I should have had to pay him the same wages for his day's work. The utility produced by the saw is then, as far as I am concerned, a gratuitous gift of nature, or rather it is a part of that inheritance which, in common with all my brethren, I have received from my ancestors. I have two workmen in my field. The one handles the plough, the other the spade. The result of their labour is very different, but the day's wages are the same, because the remuneration is not proportioned to the utility produced, but to the effort, the labour, which is exacted.
I entreat the reader's patience, and beg him to believe that I have not lost sight of free trade. Let him only have the goodness to remember the conclusion at which I have arrived: Remuneration is not in proportion to the utilities which the producer brings to market, but to his labour.*
* It is true that labour does not receive a uniform
remuneration. It may be more or less intense, dangerous,
skilled, etc. Competition settles the usual or current price
in each department—and this is the fluctuating price of
which I speak.
I have drawn my illustrations as yet from human inventions. Let us now turn our attention to natural advantages.
In every branch of production, nature and man concur. But the portion of utility which nature contributes is always gratuitous. It is only the portion of utility which human labour contributes which forms the subject of exchange, and, consequently, of remuneration. The latter varies, no doubt, very much in proportion to the intensity of the labour, its skill, its promptitude, its suitableness, the need there is of it, the temporary absence of rivalry, etc. But it is not the less true, in principle, that the concurrence of natural laws, which are common to all, counts for nothing in the price of the product.
We do not pay for the air we breathe, although it is so useful to us, that, without it, we could not live two minutes. We do not pay for it, nevertheless; because nature furnishes it to us without the aid of human labour. But if, for example, we should desire to separate one of the gases of which it is composed, to make an experiment, we must make an exertion; or if we wish another to make that exertion for us, we must sacrifice for that other an equivalent amount of exertion, although we may have embodied it in another product. Whence we see that pains, efforts, and exertions are the real subjects of exchange. It is not, indeed, the oxygen gas that I pay for, since it is at my disposal everywhere, but the labour necessary to disengage it, labour which has been saved me, and which must be recompensed. Will it be said that there is something else to be paid for, materials, apparatus, etc.? Still, in paying for these, I pay for labour. The price of the coal employed, for example, represents the labour necessary to extract it from the mine and to transport it to the place where it is to be used.
We do not pay for the light of the sim, because it is a gift of nature. But we pay for gas, tallow, oil, wax, because there is here human labour to be remunerated; and it will be remarked that, in this case, the remuneration is proportioned, not to the utility produced, but to the labour employed, so much so that it may happen that one of these kinds of artificial light, though more intense, costs us less, and for this reason, that the same amount of human labour affords us more of it.
Were the porter who carries water to my house to be paid in proportion to the absolute utility of water, my whole fortune would be insufficient to remunerate him. But I pay him in proportion to the exertion he makes. If he charges more, others will do the work, or, if necessary, I will do it myself. Water, in truth, is not the subject of our bargain, but the labour of carrying it. This view of the matter is so important, and the conclusions which I am about to deduce from it throw so much light on the question of the freedom of international exchanges, that I deem it necessary to elucidate it by other examples.
The alimentary substance contained in potatoes is not very costly, because we can obtain a large amount of it with comparatively little labour. We pay more for wheat, because the production of it costs a greater amount of human labour. It is evident that if nature did for the one what it does for the other, the price of both would tend to equality. It is impossible that the producer of wheat should permanently gain much more than the producer of potatoes. The law of competition would prevent it.
If by a happy miracle the fertility of all arable lands should come to be augmented, it would not be the agriculturist, but the consumer, who would reap advantage from that phenomenon for it would resolve itself into abundance and cheapness. There would be less labour incorporated in each quarter of corn, and the cultivator could exchange it only for a smaller amount of labour worked up in some other product. If, on the other hand, the fertility of the soil came all at once to be diminished, nature's part in the process of production would be less, that of human labour would be greater, and the product dearer. I am, then, warranted in saying that it is in consumption, in the human element, that all the economic phenomena come ultimately to resolve themselves. The man who has failed to regard them in this light, to follow them out to their ultimate effects, without stopping short at immediate results, and viewing them from the producer's standpoint, can no more be regarded as an economist than the man who should prescribe a draught, and, instead of watching its effect on the entire system of the patient, should inquire only how it affected the mouth and throat, could be regarded as a physician.
Tropical regions are very favourably situated for the production of sugar and of coffee. This means that nature does a great part of the work, and leaves little for human labour to do. But who reaps the advantage of this liberality of nature? Not the producing countries, for competition causes the price barely to remunerate the labour. It is the human race that reaps the benefit, for the result of nature's liberality is cheapness, and cheapness benefits everybody.
Suppose a temperate region where coal and iron-ore are found on the surface of the ground, where one has only to stoop down to get them. That, in the first instance, the inhabitants would profit by this happy circumstance, I allow. But competition would soon intervene, and the price of coal and iron-ore would go on falling, till the gift of nature became free to all, and then the human labour employed would be alone remunerated according to the general rate of earnings.
Thus the liberality of nature, like improvements in the processes of production, is, or continually tends to become, under the law of competition, the common and gratuitous patrimony of consumers, of the masses, of mankind in general. Then, the countries which do not possess these advantages have everything to gain by exchanging their products with those countries which possess them, because the subject of exchange is labour, apart from the consideration of the natural utilities worked up with that labour; and the countries which have incorporated in a given amount of their labour the greatest amount of these natural utilities, are evidently the most favoured countries. Their products which represent the least amount of human labour are the least profitable; in other words, they are cheaper; and if the whole liberality of nature resolves itself into cheapness, it is evidently not the producing, but the consuming, country which reaps the benefit.
Hence we see the enormous absurdity of consuming countries which reject products for the very reason that they are cheap. It is as if they said, "We want nothing that nature gives us. You ask me for an effort equal to two, in exchange for a product which
