274 
On Value. 
[Sept, 
held in the same general esteem in all times and places, the quantity of producing 
labour being known, we may know, at the same time, the relative values of pro- 
ducts, one to the other. But this knowledge, although it will be of use to those 
engaged in barter, will -convey but little information to the political economists ; 
whose aim is to learn, not how products stand to products, btit how those products 
stand to man, which form his wealth and revenue. 
The equality or difference in the cost of producing two articles, will, after their 
real value is known and acknowledged, be the cause of their relative values being 
equal or different : but the equality or difference is no cause whatever of the 
existence of their real value. Either of the products might have been possessed 
of real value, although there had been no possibility that the other should exist ; 
and this, simply, because either the one or the other, even if it were the only 
product in the world, might he calculated to operate, so steadily in determining 
the will of man, as to warrant our drawing inferences, and making calculations 
concerning his subsequent conduct with regard to it. 
The cause of real value then, in the primary description of wealth, is not, let me 
repeat, the quantity of labour of which it may be the result : but the quantity of la- 
bour which it must command, will, in practice, be the index, by which its exist- 
ence is known : for food, it has been seen, might be obtained without labour, 
and is, in fact, in practice, obtained with much less labour than it will support 
and command : and yet it is possessed of value, determined by causes quite 
distinct from the labour bestowed in its production. 
If then absolute value be, in reality, but an affection of the mind of man regard- 
ing existing products, which must be constant, how can any thing be predicated 
concerning it, from a study of the mere relations in which products may stand to 
products ? Yet all who refuse to admit the existence of positive value, fall, of neces- 
sity, into this gross error of reasoning regarding one subject, on premises drawn 
from the consideration of another subject, of a nature completely different : and this 
we have Mr. Maltbus’s authority for stating, all political economists do: for he de- 
clares, in his latest work on Definitions in that science, that no writer, he has met 
with, “ has ever appeared to use the term value, without an intelligible reference, 
expressed or implied, to something else.” 
Perhaps it may be said, as I have already remarked, that as all writers, in the 
expressed or implied references Jiere adverted to, keep in their minds, when com- 
paring the value of products, labour as the ultimate index of valuation ; their 
conclusions on this subject may coincide with mine ; labour, in my system, 
being likewise one of the intermediate steps by which I arrive at my conclusions 
regarding real value. 
But as none of these writers directly admit another source of value than labour— 
as they, on the contrary, insist, that all descriptions of products must be valuable, 
merely because of there beiug so much labour fixed or realized, and not because 
of their being calculated to produce certain effects on the minds of men — and as 
they generally admit that, in process of time, more labour may become necessary, 
for bringing labour into existence, than at former times was necessary, which 
is, in effect, treating labour as being at one, and the same time, as being both a 
cause and an effect ; I maintain, thati n studying labour as the index to value, 
under such circumstances, they do no more than study the relations of products 
to products ; for with them, the value of every description of product, and the 
labour worked up in each, are convertible terms ; and looking no further than 
the products themselves — neglecting, altogether, to come up to the real source of 
valuation — namely, the thoughts and opinions of mankind, they are continually 
adrift on a wide sea of uncertainty, without rudder to keep them in their 
course, or pilot to be their guide. 
I shall now devote a few pages to the establishment of the principle, that what 
has here been premised of the value of primary wealth, in the earlier stages of so- 
ciety, is equally true during all successive periods. 
It iv. ay, tor the sake of keeping the subject clear in the outset, be admitted, as a 
fir>t principle, that man’s personal strength anti power of bestowing labour is the 
same during all stages of production. 
With the same view it may be further assumed, that man is, at all times, 
equally under the influence of the procreative power of nature ; and consequently, 
t iat his numbers must constantly be making a close approximation to that 
amount, for which subsistence is obtainable. 
ti . f ^ len a «n*n’s utmost labour be a fixed quantity, and if he must ever be exerting 
ta utmost labour, it follows, that the produce obtainable with the aid of labour, 
