48 
Further Observations regarding Value. 
[Feb. 
which raises the exchangeable value of products above their real value, or actual 
cost. This mistaking a collateral effect for a cause, is a species of sophistry, which, 
I regret to say, vitiates the reasonings of many of our leading political economists ; 
but let it pass at present. I do not here mean to enter into the question of what 
causes a difference between prime cost and market price ; I may hereafter touch on 
this, as well as on many other simple matters, which appear to me to be misunder- 
stood, and mystified. I must now return to Mr. M’Culloch’s manner of treating real 
and relative value. Having enlisted himself under Mr. Ricardo’s banners, and 
having become persuaded, by his means, that it is through exchangeable, and not 
through real value, that we are to become acquainted with the varying circumstances 
of the different classes in society ; with their increasing, or diminishing wealth, or 
poverty ; he, although perfectly aware how much more wealthy or more poor, certain 
changes in productive power may render all classes, although thus in effect, stating 
how much the profits and wages which support them, may thereby be altered in 
quantity, is found treating this as a matter of little importance, and as being scarcely 
worthy the attention of political economists, when contrasted with the circumstance 
of certain relations of the products amongst themselves, remaining unchanged at the 
time in question ; he turns his eyes from what vitally concerns mankind, and fixes 
them upon what can merely be questions of investigation to the curious : in proof, I 
beg the reader’s attention to what follows. 
“ It is abundantly obvious, that all commodities possessed of -exchangeable, must 
also be possessed of real value, and vice versd.” page 211. 
“ All” that an invariable standard of exchangeable value “ would teach us, 
would be, that the causes which first made A” (the standard) “ exchange for B,” 
(the commodity,) “ continued to affect them both to the same proportional extent; 
but of the nature of those causes, and the intensity of their operation, we should be 
left wholly in the dark.” “ Having ascertained that the exchangeable value of 
any one commodity must always be expressed by the relation it bears to some other 
commodity, or to labour ; the next object that claims our attention, is the investiga- 
tion of the circumstances which determine this relation, or of the regulating prin- 
ciple of value. ‘ It is the quantity of labour required to produce” commodities, 
“ that forms the single principle by which their real value is exclusively regulated 
and determined; and it will be afterwards shown, that when there are no mono- 
polies, and the supply of commodities in the market is exactly proportioned to the 
effectual demand, their exchangeable value is identical with their real value.” “ If 
it should be found, that the power of a commodity A, to purchase or exchange for 
another commodity B, were increased ; and if it should also be found, that an equal 
increase had taken place in the quantity of labour required to produce A, while the 
quantity required to produce B continued the same, we should be entitled to say, that 
” ™'*y»ble value, because it had increased in real value ; assum- 
r j,ty° ™ Ub ' e of “Wing any thing to be the measure of its real value, or 
tion in^which tV* ii '* f elll . l>5 ' lts possessor, and consequently of the propor- 
tion m which he will exchange it for other thin™ ” «« vr • *u * . , 
hip pan i , , tr mm gs. Nothing that is valua- 
ble can be obtained except bv the pvprtmn . . ° 
physical fm™ mu- • 1 . * X( -i tion of a certain amount of labour, or of 
“bv n „ T ^ I"* ma " mUSt W fOT a11 “ngs not spontaneously 
tC r; J ‘ * ,S '"r ly hy the “P*"* of the price, and not by 
I We given 1' ! Tt T T’ ^ Vahle is to be -tilted." 
portance h e d„es L "1 ^ M ' Cull ° d ‘' 8 *«*. * show how much im- 
of saying, that real value must be the f °. r h ' here g °' S ,he lenS;tl> 
^ bC thC Same * ^e state of mar k e^“t“^ 
