the supply; for a commodity is not supplied merely because it can be produced, but because there is a demand for it. Here then we have a case where the supply and demand have scarcely varied, or if they have increased they have increased in the same proportion; and yet the price of bread will have fallen 50 per cent. at a time too when the value of money had continued invariable.
Commodities which are monopolized, either by an individual, or by a company, vary according to the law which Lord Lauderdale has laid down: they fall in proportion as the sellers augment their quantity, and rise in proportion to the eagerness of the buyers to purchase them; their price has no necessary connexion with their natural value: but the prices of commodities, which are subject to competition, and whose quantity may be increased in any moderate degree, will ultimately depend, not on the state of demand and supply, but on the increased or diminished cost of their production.