unusually high, the tendency of their operations is to equalize price, or at least to moderate its inequalities. The prices of things are neither so much depressed at one time, nor so much raised at another, as they would be if speculative dealers did not exist.
It appears, then, that the fluctuations of values and prices arising from variations of supply, or from alterations in real (as distinguished from speculative) demand, may be expected to become more moderate as society advances. With regard to those which arise from miscalculation, and especially from the alternations of undue expansion and excessive contraction of credit, which occupy so conspicuous a place among commercial phenomena, the same thing can not be affirmed with equal confidence. Such vicissitudes, beginning with irrational speculation and ending with a commercial crisis, have not hitherto become either less frequent or less violent with the growth of capital and extension of industry. Rather they may be said to have become more so, in consequence, as is often said, of increased competition, but, as I prefer to say, of a lower rate of profits and interest, which makes capitalists dissatisfied with the ordinary course of safe mercantile gains. The connection of this low rate of profit with the advance of population and accumulation is one of the points to be illustrated in the ensuing chapters.
Mr. Cairnes also adds some investigations as to the fluctuations of value: “Hitherto I have examined the derivative laws of value in so far only as they are exemplified in the movements of normal prices. It will be interesting now to consider whether it is possible to discover in the movements of market prices any corresponding phenomena.
“Taking manufactures first, it is evident at once that, as regards conditions of protection, the circumstances of the case are such as to secure, in general, (1.)