LABOUR, WAGES, AND TRADES* UNIONS. 459 



are most interested in it, divested of the intricacies of theory, and 

 the niceties of definition. The subject of the present essay is LA- 

 BOUR its USEFULNESS, and its REWARD. 



II. VALUE. Labour an ingredient of, but not the standard 

 of value. 



" The word value," says Adam Smith, " has two different mean- 

 ings, and sometimes expresses the utility of some particular object, 

 and sometimes the power of purchasing other goods, which the pos- 

 session of that object conveys. The one may be called value in use ; 

 the other value in exchange. The things which have the greatest 

 value in use have frequently little or no value in exchange ; and, on 

 the contrary, those which have the greatest value in exchange, have 

 little or no value in use." 



For instance : "Water and air/' says Ricardo, " are abundantly 

 useful ; they are indeed indispensable to existence ; yet, under ordi- 

 nary circumstances, nothing can be obtained in exchange for them. 

 Gold, on the contrary, though of little use compared with air or water, 

 will exchange for a great quantity of other goods." 



So much of definition we have quoted, without comment from ac- 

 knowledged authorities. 



" The real price of everything, what everything really costs to the 

 man who wants to acquire it, is the toil and trouble of acquiring it. 

 What anything is really worth to the man who has acquired it, and 

 who wants to dispose of it, or exchange it for something else, is tha 

 toil and trouble which it can save to himself, and which it can impose 

 other people." Adam Smith. 



" Labour was the first price the original purchase-money that 

 was paid for all things." Ditto. 



" Labour alone, never varying in its own value, is alone the ultimate 

 and real standard by which the value of all commodities can at all 

 times and places be estimated and compared." Ditto. 



We have quoted these passages not so much with a view of con- 

 troverting their principle, as by way of shewing how they are sus- 

 ceptible of misapprehension and error on the part of those who do 

 not thoroughly enter into the spirit with which they were penned. 

 When Smith says, that " real value of everything" is the labour of 

 acquiring it, he does riot mean to- speak literally and ot individuals j 

 he means merely to assert the grand principle that the value of the 

 whole mass of useful commodities in the world has its original cause 

 in the labour with which they have been converted or appropriated 

 from their natural source in the bounties of creation. The above 

 rules will be found to hold strictly good, if we consider them in re- 

 ference to a society in its primitive state, when to live from day to 

 day was the sole object of daily solicitude, and the result of daily 

 labour. That man should live by the sweat of his brow, was the Al- 

 mighty ordinance in the beginning ; and there was a time when every 

 man, literally and individually, fulfilled this injunction of heaven. In 

 course of time, however, as population increased, and as the princi- 

 ple of acquiring and retaining property obtained, and as dominion 

 was assumed and allowed to man over his fellow men, the prophecy 



