J830.] 
On Value. 
269 
zini’s work, which was published in the year 1691, gives ample proof of the art 
having been practised from the earliest period in the environs of Modena. From 
thence it spread to France, and, as mentioned in the late programme of the Royal 
Society of Agriculture of Paris, the merit of their introduction is due to Domenico 
Cassini, who was invited from Italy to the court of Louis XIV, and was shortly 
after elected a member of the Academy of Sciences. The earliest information that 
we possess of any well being bored in the Comte d’Artois, is, perhaps, that given 
by Belidor, in his Science de /' lngenicur, liv. iv. chap. 12. He saw, in the year 1729, 
in the church of St. Andre, a well of this description, which gave 20 yards of water 
in an hour, and rose a yard above the surface of the ground. Near Paris, accord- 
ing to M. Hericart de Thury, the first Artesian well was sunk at Clicky, in the 
middle of the last century. It reached the depth of 93 feet, and rose four feet above 
the level of the Seine. In Germany, where the art of boring mines has been 
known for more than a century, and where Leopold (Schauplatz der Wasserbau- 
kunst, Leipzig, 1724,) has applied them to the boring of fresh water springs, this 
use has been made of them, but not so much as to the finding of salt springs ; yet 
it may be expected, from the zeal with which the search for Artesian wells is carri- 
ed on in France, that similar works will be carried on in other countries. 
POGGENDORF. 
II. — On Value. 
§ 2 . 
If from man’s entire dependance on food, and from the circumstances, >vitU 
regard to food, under which it has pleased his Creator to place him on earth, there 
must be, in all societies, a large proportion of the population in want of the means 
of subsistence ; — if needy men mast always be willing to make a sacrifice of their 
utmost exertion to obtain subsistence ; if the utmost exertion of men, on the 
average, be a certain quantity and if there can be but one opinion amongst them 
regarding this exertion ; then we have something fixed and determinate to enable 
us to know the sentiments and feelings of men regarding food. In other words, we. 
have a key to the knowledge of the positive value, of the primary description of 
wealth, which the mass of the people must entertain ; and we have the means of 
knowing also, how much of labour, or of its products, food will command. When 
we are told, such and such a product cost so much labour of the poof, we may 
thence learn its real value ; because we can thence ascertain what sacrifice the 
mass of mankind are agreed in tlrinkirtg its possession is worth. 
Now this appears to me a very different description of knowledge from that 
which the mere comparison of two products enables us to acquire. This is learn- 
ing the real value of products ; whereas our ascertaining, that one certain valuable 
product is exchangeable or not for another valuable product, teaches us, not the 
nature of value in either product, but that value being a quality already existing 
in both products, it stands either in the relation of equality, or in some other 
relation within the two different bodies. And yet we are told, that the value of 
products, relatively to one another, or exchangeable value, is the only value which 
can exist ! 
Without an ultimate reference to the feelings of mankind, with regard to pro- 
ducts, and without the existence of the means to determine what the ^opinions of 
men are, concerning some one class of products in particular, there could have 
existed no knowledge whatever of appreciable value. 
When, as has been usual with those who treat of value, as being merely relative 
and as originating solely in labour, we trace the value of products to the labour 
of which they are the result; and not to that labour as an index to the feelings*- 
and opinions, which moral agents, the actual percipients of value, must necessarily 
entertain regarding an existing quality ; what do we effect ? We find that labour is 
a product of labour, and that the value of the labour in the market must be deter- 
mined by the quantity of labour of which it is the result. If to raise a sufficiency 
oi tood to support labour, more and more labour may continually be bestowed in 
the acquisition, the value of labour must continually rise ; and thus the value of 
labour rising as the food which supports it rises, there will be no end to the 
• We arG ’ in J th 1 US reas °ning, giving, as it appears to me, 
labour credit for being, at one and the same time, both the cause and the effect • 
