if tried by the principle laid down in our last chapter, "that a rise in the value of a commodity means, that an equal quantity of it exchanges for a greater quantity than before, of the commodity in relation to which it is said to rise." To maintain, therefore, that a increases in value to B, and at the same time that it commands a smaller quantity of B, is to affirm a rise and fall in A at the same moment.

In the second sense the proposition, as I have already remarked, is too self-evident to require any proof; and as the author of the Dialogues has expended so much labour and dialectical skill in explaining and supporting it, we might fairly infer that this is not the sense in which he meant it to be interpreted, even if he had not put the matter beyond dispute by his doctrine, so frequently and strongly expressed, "that there is no necessary connection at all, or of any kind, between the quantity commanded and the value commanding *."

The eminent writers on whose doctrines I

* Ibid., p. 552.

have hazarded the preceding observations, agree in defining value to be the power of an object to purchase or command other objects in exchange. Adhering to this definition, it is difficult to conceive what propriety they could have discerned in their use of the words real and nominal. A real power of purchasing implies, if it means any thing, that it is not a false or pretended power; while the counter phrase, a nominal power of purchasing, intimates that the power is only in name; that it is not what it professes to be. But the applicability of these epithets can have no dependence on the nature of the commodities in relation to which the power is possessed, nor on the causes affecting the production of the commodity in which the power resides. According to all proper usage, the epithets refer not to any thing in the power itself, but to the quality of the affirmation that the power exists, characterizing that affirmation as true or false.

CHAPTER III.

ON THE VALUE OF LABOUR.

UNLESS we change the meaning of value in the case of labour from that which it bears when applied to any thing else, the value of labour must signify the power of commanding other things in exchange. The term in reference to labour, as in all other cases, denotes a relation, and the relation, in this instance, must be between labour and commodities. Labour, therefore, is high in value when it commands a large, and low when it commands a small quantity of commodities; and when labour is said to rise or fall in value, the expression implies, that a definite portion of it, a day's labonr for example, exchanges for a larger or a smaller quantity of commodities than before. This is

obviously the only interpretation of which the terms rise and fall of labour admit, consistently with the definition of value.

Before proceeding to apply these positions to the current doctrines of the day, it will be necessary to call the reader's attention to a comparison of the terms "value of labour," and " wages," and to the way in which they are employed. The value of labour, as we have just seen, signifies the relation in which labour stands to commodities. The term wages has the same meaning -for we may say indifferently the wages of labour are three shillings. a day, or the value of labour is three shillings a day; but it is often employed with greater laxity of signification.

Mr. Ricardo, for example, talks of "the labour and capital employed in producing wages," and of "the real value of wages*;" in which instances it is impossible to substitute

* 66 Wages are to be estimated by their real value, viz. by the quantity of labour and capital employed in producing them." Pol. Econ., p. 50.

the term value of labour instead of wages, as might be done if the two expressions were used as synonymous and equivalent. We could not speak with propriety of "the labour and capital employed in producing the value of labour," or of "the real value of the value of labour."

The term wages, when thus used, appears intended to denote the commodities or money given to the labourer in exchange for his labour-not the value of his labour in money, but the money itself. This is either an unwarrantable use of the term, or there is a double meaning in it as I think a little consideration will show, although the distinction, which I shall attempt to make, may seem on a first glance to be a distinction without a difference. It will be ac

knowledged, that the value of labour can be expressed only by the quantity of some commodity given for a definite portion of it. Thus, if silver is that commodity, the value of a day's labour is expressed by the quantity of silver, or, what is the same thing, the number of shillings which