18 
and wealth: haying invented - new 
meanings for these terms, they have 
no common standard to refer to, each 
defining them arbitrarily and diffe- 
rently from the rest; hence their dis- 
agreement. 5 
To show how needlessly they have 
perplexed themselves and others, let 
us compare their respective definitions 
of vALuE. The reader will tolerate 
the subject, not for any importance 
it possesses, but for the sake of dis- 
encumbering a valuable science of 
its rubbish. 
We will begin with Smith, who thus 
defines value: 
The word VALUE, it is to be observed, 
has two different meanings, and some- 
times expresses the utility of some parti- 
cular object, and sometimes the power of 
purchasing other goods, which the posses- 
sion of that object conveys. The one 
may be called value in use, the other value 
in exchange.—Wealth of Nations, b. 1. 
ch, iv. 
“Value in use,”’—‘‘ value in ex- 
change:” why this distinction of va- 
lues? There is only one value,—the 
price or worth of an object. Utility 
is not value, nor value utility. Water 
is abundantly useful, but it were a 
perversion of language to say it is 
valuable; and diamonds are abun- 
dantly valuable, though we can hardly 
‘say they are useful. 
Smith is not more fortunate in his 
next definition, where he says that the 
value of a commodity to any one “is 
equal to the quantity of labour which 
it enables him to purchase or com- 
mand.” Had he said, as JoKknson 
has said, that the value of a commo- 
dity is equal to its work, or the quantity 
of labour, or other things, for which it 
would exchange, his definition would 
have been right enough. 
Let us try Mr. Ricarpo :— 
» Possessing utility, commodities derive 
their exchangeable value from two sources : 
from their scarcity and the quantity of la- 
bour required to produce them.—Principles 
of Political Economy. 
Scarcity is a source of dearness, but 
it is hardly correct to term it a source 
of value. The two words essentially 
differ, and ought not to be confound- 
ed in a definition. Mr. Ricardo’s se- 
cond element of value is not .more 
happy. The value-of corn, for in- 
stance, will vary with the harvest; but 
in that case its value depends on the 
seasons, not on the quantity of labour 
required to produce tt. 
The Political Economist, No. 11.. 
[Aug. 1, 
The reader will observe that Mr, 
Ricardo differs from Adam Smith; 
one making value consist in labour, 
the other in labour and scarcity; but 
Mr. Ricardo is more unfortunate than 
in differing from Smith, for in another 
part of his work he differs from him- 
self. Take the following extract :— 
Value, then, essentially differs from 
riches; for value depends not on abun- 
dance, but on the difficulty or facility of 
production,— Ibid. 
Surely if value depends on scarcity, 
as Mr. Ricardo affirmed in the first 
instance, it depends on abundance, 
(one being only a negation of the 
other,) but he says it doesnot. Is it 
surprising that such extreme inge- 
nuity puzzles the reader. 
Now for another light. Mr. Mat- 
THUus has no fewer than three sorts of 
value :— 
1. Value in use; which may be defined 
to be the intrinsic utility of an object. 
2. Value in exchange, which may be 
defined to be the value of commodities in 
the precious metals. 
3. Real value in exchange ; which may 
be defined to be the power of an object 
to command the necessaries and conve- 
niences of life, including labour.—Political 
Economy, p. 62. 
Instead of three values, Mr. Mal- 
thus ‘might have made half a dozen. 
For example, a famine value, the 
price commodities attain in a dearth ; 
or a restriction value, the price pro- 
duced by an inconvertible paper-mo- 
ney; and so on. Such distinctions 
may be made ad libitum ; they convey 
no real knowledge, and only puzzle 
both writer and reader. Mr. Malthus 
is not content, no more than Smith 
and Ricardo, with one explanation of 
the same word. Compare the fol- 
lowing extracts :— ; 
I shall continue to think that the most 
proper definition of real value in ex- 
change, in contradistinction to nominal 
value in exchange, is the power of com- 
manding the necessaries and conveniences of 
life, including labour.— Ibid. p. 62. 
It is obviously therefore the value of 
commodities, or the sacrifice of labour and 
other articles, which people are willing to 
make in order to obtain them, that in the 
actual state of things may be said to be 
the sole cause of the existence of wealth ; 
and this value is founded on the wants of 
mankind, and the adaptation of particnlar 
commodities to supply these wants, inde- 
pendantly of the actual quantity of labour 
which these commodities may cost or require 
in their production.— Ibid. p. 342. 
To 
