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 concerned
 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, arising
 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 resolvable
 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 indirectly
 the products of equal quantities of labour,
 although no other circumstance existed