THE WEALTH OF NATIONS.

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equal to what GO/. 13.y. 4 d. would purchase in the presenttimes; and Asinius Celer gave for a surmullet the commandof a quantity equal to what 88/. 17s. 9 \d. would purchase.What occasioned the extravagance of those high prices was,not so much the abundance of silver, as the abundance of la-bour and subsistence, of which those Romans had the disposal,beyond what was necessary for their own use. The quantityof silver, of which they had the disposal, was a good deal lessthan what the command of the same quantity of labour andsubsistence would have procured to them in the present times.

Second Sort.

The second sort of rude produce of which the price risesin the progress of improvement, is that which human industrycan multiply in proportion to the demand. It consists in thoseuseful plants and animals, which in uncultivated countries,nature produces with such profuse abundance, that they areot little or no value, and which, as cultivation advances, aretherelorc forced to give place to some more profitable pro-duce. During a long period in the progress of improvement,the quantity of these is continually diminishing, while at thesame time the demand for them is continually increasing.Their real value, therefore, the real quantity of labour whichthey will purchase or command, gradually rises, till at last itgets so high as to render them as profitable a produce as anything else which human industry can raise upon the mostfertile and best cultivated land. When it has got so high itcannot well go higher. If it did, more land and more industrywould soon be employed to increase their quantity.

When the price of cattle, for example, rises so high thatit is as profitable to cultivate land in order to raise food forthem, as in order to raise food for man, it cannot well gohigher. If it did, more corn land would soon be turned intopasture. The extension of tillage, by diminishing the quan-tity of wild pasture, diminishes the quantity of butcher’s meatwhich the country naturally produces without labour or culti-vation, and by increasing the number of those who have eithercorn, or, what comes to the same tiling, the price of corn, togive in exchange for it, increases the demand. The price ofbutcher's meat, therefore, and consequently of cattle, mustgradually rise till it gets so high, that it becomes as profitableto employ the most fertile and best cultivated lands in raisingfood for them as in raising corn. But it must always be late