226 ON THE CAUSES 
have been determined by the mere quantity of 
labour: it may have been affected by the value 
of that labour, since the skill of those con- 
cerned in raising it may have been better paid 
than in other employments, or have done the 
work with half the usual number of hands, or 
there may be some peculiarity of hardship, aris- 
ing from the nature of the employment itself. 
In the second case, if the value of produce 
from a superior soil is regulated by the quantity 
of labour necessary to raise the same kind on 
inferior soils, it is not determined by the labour 
actually employed in raising such produce, and 
therefore the value of the produce is not resolv- 
able into quantity of labour. 
Hence it appears, that the value of capital 
may possibly be traced to quantity of labour 
as its origin, but it is not necessarily traceable 
to it; and we therefore could not pronounce, 
that because A and B are equal in value, these 
two articles have been either directly or indi- 
rectly the products of equal quantities of la- 
bour, although no other circumstance existed