Lectures On Political Economy

has no exchangeable value; and human population could hardly exist, unless it were everywhere extremely cheap. To the idea of Wealth (in any emphatic sense) it is essential that the articles so named should be easily marketable and should exchange for a great deal. Hence if anywhere Nature were so profuse as to give food of herself,?as from the Breadfruit Tree growing spontaneously, such food might become as valueless as Water with us. And wherever either food or any other useful or elegant article is produced with little effort, in quantities far beyond the need or desire of the immediate neighbours, it becomes low-priced in the extreme, unless it can be sent away to those who need or desire it more. To find out who these are, is called,?opening a new market; and its tendency is, to confer a new value on the articles. To make the objects of our natural desire available to our enjoyment, two things are needed,?first, that they Reproduced; secondly, that they he distributed. The second process is as essential as the first. Wheat flourishing on the fields, or even stored in the granaries, of Podolia, Hungary, or Ohio, is as useless to a hungry Englishman as if it had never heen produced, unless there be at least a prospect of its carriage hither, or of its supplying those who send away their own wheat to us. The expense of distribution may easily exceed that of production, as, I presume, must happen with the breadfruit, if eaten in Moscow, or French wine drunk...