Like all other contracts, wages should be left to the fair and free competition of themarket, and should never be controlled by the interference of the legislature.

The farmer and manufacturer can no more live without profit than the labourer without wages.

The opinions that the price of commodities depends solely on the proportion of supply and demand, or demand to supply, has become almost an axiom in political economy, and has been the source of much error in that science.

...I wish that I may never think the smiles of the great and powerful a sufficient inducement to turn aside from the straight path of honesty and the convictions of my own mind.

The factors left out of the Ricardian equation are falling wages and idle capacity.

LABOUR, like all other things which are purchased and sold, and which may be increased or diminished in quantity, has its natural and its market price. The natural price of labour is that price which is necessary to enable the labourers, on with another, to subsist and to perpetuate their race, without either increase or diminution.

For price is everywhere regulated by the return obtained by this last portion of capital, for which no rent whatever is paid.