combination of all the circumstances under which all the parts of the society are placed.
You augment the fundamental value: the circumstances which have before fixed the proportion which the current value bears to this fundamental value cannot but cause the current value to rise until the proportion is re-established. I am aware that this result will not be sudden; and that in every complicated machine there are frictions[1] which delay the results[2] most infallibly demonstrated by theory. Even in the case of a fluid perfectly homogeneous, it takes time for the level to be restored; but with time it always is restored. It is the same with the equilibrium of the values which we are examining. The workman, as you say, taxes his ingenuity to work more or consume less; but all this is only temporary.[3] Doubtless there is no man who works as much as he could. But it is no more natural for men to work as much as they can than for a cord to be stretched as much as it can be. There is a degree of relaxation necessary in every machine, without which it would run the risk of breaking at any moment. This degree of relaxation in the case of labour is fixed by a thousand causes which continue to operate after the tax is imposed; and consequently, even if by a first effort the tension had increased, things would not be long in regaining their natural shape.
What I have said about the augmentation of labour I also say about the diminution of consumption. Wants are always the same.[4] That kind of superfluity out of which
