on to say, that "the value of Dantzic wheat, on an average of export, varies from 5s. to 8s. per quarter ABOVE the value of British average wheat"; and after this astounding statement he adds another not at all less so, viz. that Baltic wheat collectively [by which is not meant wheat opposed to the Dantzic wheat, but so understood as to include the Dantzic wheat] may with safety "be estimated on an average to be 5s. ABOVE the value of the growth of the British Islands." Could I trust my own eyes? Undoubtedly I was aware, and had repeatedly used that conviction in print, that the extreme difference between English wheat and foreign would never turn out such experimentally as to justify the monstrous delusions of the CornLaw agitators. Well I knew that the working poor man would find the ultimate bonus upon his bread to be next to nothing under whatsoever changes of the Corn-Law; assuming even the stationariness of wages, and assuming also that no such reaction of evil should arise from the injury to our domestic agriculture as unavoidably would arise. All this I knew. But still, though pretty doubtful, and in the issue liable to be dangerously disturbed, any difference which did exist between the prices of Baltic and English wheat was undeniably in favor of the first. That was notoriously the cheaper; if not, how should importation need any legal restraint? Here was the perplexity; but one moment cleared it up. It was a verbal equivoque. Mr. Stoddart had pronounced the Baltic wheat by 5s. on a quarter ABOVE the English wheat in value. Ay, but in what value? Did he mean value in exchange, value as expressed by the market price? On the contrary, he meant value in use. From the tenor of what follows, it is evident that he does not dispute the usual intervaluations of Baltic and English grain. He assumes that, in Poland, before it is loaded with a long list of expenses, the wheat would be very considerably cheaper than English wheat. Why, then, had he said that already in Poland it was above the English in value by 5s.? He meant that intrinsically, as a thing to be used, it was above the English; superior (1.) in its capacity of being baked; or (2.) in its capacity of being kept; or (3.) in its capacity of yielding nutriment; or (4.) in its flavor to the palate in some one, or some two, or some three, or in all four of these advantages, he claims for it a superiority to the English; and, what must add to the reader's perplexity, he measures this superiority by money, - meaning the 5s. (as one eighth of 40s.) simply to indicate that the quality of Baltic wheat was superior in that precise ratio; better by a proportion answering to one eighth part on any given quantity.

One single exemplification, drawn from a case of actual occurrence, is worth twenty which are artificially framed. And this decisive passage, from an excellent essay in a journal of high character, falling into my hands without search, at the very moment of writing the passage which it illustrates, seems effectual for the proof of what Mr. Malthus thought next to impossible; viz. that men can and do, without any system to serve, naturally fall into this "value" as representing the mere serviceableness of an article quite apart from its exchangerating in the market. Let the extreme importance of the subject, and the necessity of weighing every turn in the dispute, for one who comes after a world of failures with the promise of setting them all to rights, apologize for the length of this note.

NOTE 3. Page 14.

. Special admiration.”—For example, Mr. Prinsep (in his translation of "Say's Political Economy"), a man of great acuteness and information, has noticed this eighteenth chapter of Ricardo as peculiarly profound; whilst, on the other hand, to the able author of "A Critical Dissertation on Value," to Mr. Malthus, and to others, it is a mere scandal and rock of offence.

NOTE 4. Page 15.

"No longer regulative but constitutive."— This is a great distinction heretofore applied to great purposes by Kant; and a general reader might fancy reason for complaint in finding thus presupposed the knowledge of philosophy, which, in England, is but slightly extended. To presume anything of the kind would indeed be eminently offensive, and an instance of affectation quite inconsistent with the simplicities of good sense. But, in this case, the two terms opposed almost explain themselves. As an example of a regulative idea, one might allege any idea of pure abstract geometry: for instance, the want of parts or partibility in a geometrical point; the absolute equality of all the radii drawn from a common centre; or, in philosophy, the assumption of an ideal man as a normal type, towards which we may conceive a perpetual tendency in the actual man of our experience, all these are regulative ideas. Nobody pretends, for a moment, that a true and actual equality of the semi-diameters ever was, or could be, realized; the hand does not exist that could draw such lines, nor the eye that could judge of them, if drawn. But what then?

They are most useful, -nay, they are indispensable as initial postulates for the guidance of the mind in developing other ideas; without them, although in themselves often fugitive, and never to be overtaken in practice, we could not advance at all. And such is the precise benefit from Ricardo's idea of "wealth," technically so called; it is an artificial idea, which, though inert, keeps in their proper places other ideas more tangible and constitutive. On the other hand, the counterpole of this idea―viz. Value in Exchange — enters largely, and as a constituent element, into all the cardinal ideas of political economy.

NOTE 5. Page 18.

By such a cavil as is stated below."— When hay, for instance, is cited as an article uniting the two conditions laid down, and for that reason as obtaining exchangeable value, it might be alleged that hay meets no human desire, but only a bestial desire. True; and with a view inter alia to this particular form of cavil, I have enlarged the definition by saying, "human desire or purpose." A man has no direct gratification from hay, but indirectly he may have a good deal. The hay may be nothing to the man who buys it; but his horse, who is a connoisseur in hay, may be indispensable to his daily happiness, or even to his safety; and that, which in some proportion is essential to the desires of his horse, becomes secondarily a purpose to the

man.

NOTE 6. Page 19.

Inter-repellent.” —The late Mr. Coleridge suggested, and by his own example sanctioned, the use of the preposition inter for expressing cases of reciprocal action, or, in his language, of interaction. Thus, the verb interpenetrate, when predicated of the substances A and B, implied that, by an equal action and reaction, each penetrated the other; to interaid (though strictly a Latin preposition should not coalesce with a word not Latin), would express the case where aid in different modes is lent by cach of two parties interchangeably. The same complex function is sustained by the French prefix s'entre. But, even as a justifiable English usage, it may be found occasionally in Shakespeare; and much more frequently in Daniel, a writer of the same age, unusually meditative and philosophic, both in his prose and in his verse. The word interview, though now tamed into a lower cast of idea, originally arose upon this application of interchangeable or reciprocating actions.

NOTE 7. Page 23.

"As really is the paradox."-Some readers will here admonish mc to say, -not "is" the paradox, but "seems "the paradox; or rather, they will require me to omit the word paradox altogether, under the prevailing notion that a paradox implies something really extravagant, and something eventually hostile to the truth. In these circumstances it will scarcely be sufficient for me to remind them of the original Grecian meaning attached to this word, which implied no more than what was off-lying from the high-road of popular opinion, or what contradicted the tenor of popular expectation, —all which might surely be found in some great truth as well as in some notorious falsehood. The objector will retort upon me, that the original Grecian use may have been effectually disturbed and defeated by a long and steady English abuse. Meantime, the fact is, that the original sense of the paradoxical has maintained itself not less in our language than in the ancient Greck. I remember once to have placed this under a clear light by the following antithetic form of words: "Not that is paradoxical, or not that chiefly, which, being false, puts on the semblance of truth; but, on the contrary, that which, being true, puts on the semblance of falsehood." Therefore it was that Boyle most accurately entitled some striking cases in statical physics, Hydrostatical Paradoxes. Did he mean to advertise these startling facts of science as splendid falsehoods? No, but as great truths, which counterfeited the extravagant.

NOTE 8. Page 24.

"Six guineas." —It is not a matter of much importance in a case which concerns us only by its principle, and where the principle would remain unaffected by any variation in the factual circumstances, what might be the price of a hypothetic snuff-box, in the hands of a hypothetic Jew, on the deck of a hypothetic steamboat. However, as a case within my own experience, it may be interesting to state the known extremes of price upon this class of trinkets. At present (1843) such boxes, coarsely mounted (in horn or mock tortoiseshell), are offered in London for one guinea apiece. Each box contains only two airs, which condition applies often indeed to boxes of seven, eight, or nine times the price; and a more important feature of inferiority lies in the slender volume of sound which the cheap ones emit. In a small room the music is sweet and sonorous, with

the mimicry of an orchestric fulness; but, unless confined and concentrated, its power is too much on a miniature scale. On the other hand, in the opposite extreme, about twenty-seven years ago, I had an opportunity of seeing (or more appropriately of hearing) a musical snuff-box, which had cost a thousand guineas. Inclosing a much profounder compass of harmonies, unavoidably it was inconveniently large; that was its fault: and perhaps fifty guineas of the price might have been spent on the mounting, which was of gold, ornamented. The interest of this toy lay in its history. Like a famous sword in the elder days of paganism, which gave occasion to the Greek proverb, τα δωρα των πολεμιων άδωρα, bootless are the gifts of enemies, or like a more famous horse in days a little later, both of which carried death and ruin through a long series of owners, this trinket was supposed to have caught in a fatal net of calamity all those whom it reached as proprietors. The box was a twin box (same time of making, same maker, same price) with one presented as a bribe to Napoleon. Amongst those who had once possessed it was a Jew, - not our Jew on Lake Superior, — but another of London and Amsterdam, vulgarly reputed of immense wealth, who died unhappily. Him slightly I knew, and valued his acquaintance, for he had known intimately, and admired, as "the foremost man of all this carth," Lord Nelson; and it illustrates the fervor of his vencration, that always on reaching a certain point in Parliament Street he used to raise his hat, and bowed as to some shadowy presence, in memory that there for the last time he had met the great admiral on the day next but one before he left London forever; viz. in the brief interspace between his return to Portsmouth from chasing the French flect to the West Indies, and his sailing to take the command off Cadiz. To Lord Nelson this perilous snuff-box had been offered repeatedly as an expression of idolatrous affection; but as the fatal legend connected with it had not been concealed, Lord Nelson laughingly declined the gift. To laugh was inevitable in our age of weak faith for such superstitions; but as a sailor, who is generally credulous in such matters, and, if at all a man of feeling, must be so, considering the many invitations to superstition connected with that world of solitary wildernesses through which he roams forever, Lord Nelson was almost confessedly afraid of the box. Indeed, at that stage of its history, the owner would have found as much difficulty in transferring what he called his "pocket consoler,” as the man who owned the bottle imp, in ridding himself of that little pestilent persecutor. Here, however, so far as my own knowledge has extended,