to the scale of D. But it is impossible that a man, valuing the article (under the very ultimate pressure of U) at eight guineas, should consent to give twelve, because D could not be overcome for less.

This latter part of the present section, viz. the symbolic illustration of the principles which control exchange value, may seem to the reader too long. Perhaps it is so; but he cannot pronounce it positively "de trop," for it enforces and explains this law, viz. that the two eternally co-present forces, essential to the idea of exchange, nevertheless govern alternately one by one, each alternately becoming inert, and neither modifying the other by the smallest fraction, when that "other" is raised by circumstances into the true controlling principle. Now, this explanation never can be held useless, so long as it shall be remembered that Adam Smith, in a passage not seldom cited as a proper basis for a whole system of dependent political economy, has absolutely declared it possible for a man to pay, by any assignable sum, a greater price for a commodity than that same man conceives its uttermost intrinsic value to justify he will give more than the maximum which he would give. Not by one iota less extravagant is the proposition fairly deducible from his words. Diamonds have no U value, he assures us, —no use (which is the one sole ground upon which, at any price, a man buys anything at all); and yet, because the D value is great, in spite of this " no use," many a man will give an enormous price for diamonds: which proposition is a fierce impossibility. And although, as will be seen in the proper section, the word "use" is here employed most abusively, and in a sense unphilosophically limited; yet in the same proportion by which this distinction, as to the word "use," will redress some of the extravagant consequences deducible from the

Smithian doctrine, in that same proportion will the famous antithesis upon diamonds and water, from which these consequences flow, vanish like a vapor; and thus will become available (against a party not within that writer's contemplation) a remark made by the critical dissertationist on value, (as well as by the late Mr. Coleridge,) viz. that oftentimes these plausible paradoxes on that side which offers any brilliancy, will be found quite unsustainable; whilst on that side which can be sustained, they will be found empty truisms, brilliant so far as they throw up a novel falsehood; but where they reverberate a truth, utterly without either novelty or force. This remark was levelled by the dissertationist at others, -chiefly (I believe) at Ricardo; but there is a luxury in seeing the engineer of so keen a truth, either in his own person, or that of his friends, "hoist by his own petard.”

SECTION III. ON THE TRUE RELATIONS IN LOGIC OF THE EXPRESSIONS U AND D.

THERE is no one manifestation of imbecile logic more frequent, than the disposition to find in all controversies merely verbal disputes. Very early in life I came to be aware that this compendious mode of dismissing weighty questions by alleging, that in fact they seemed rather to offer a dispute about words, than about things — had been always one regular and conscious resource of cant with the feeble and the indolent. And amongst the first conclusions, drawn from my own reading experience, was this, that for one known dispute seeming to concern things, but ultimately evaporating in verbal cavils, (supposing even that one to exist in any recorded form,) there might

In

be cited many hundreds of disputes which seemed, or had been declared, to be verbal; whilst, by all their consequences, they set in violently towards things.10 The tendencies of men are altogether towards that error. private companies, where the tone of society is so underbred as to allow of two people annoying the rest by disputation, — such things as verbal disputes may possibly occur; but in public, where men dispute by the pen, or under ceremonial restraints, giving time for consideration, and often with large consequences awaiting the issue, such follies are out of the question: the strong natural instinct attached to the true and substantial, the practical results at hand, and the delays interposed for reflection, bar all opening to such visionary cases, possibilities indeed in rerum naturâ, but which no man has ever witnessed; and accordingly at this hour, throughout all our vast European libraries, no man can lay his hand upon one solitary book which argues a verbal question as if it were a real one, or contends for a verbal issue.11

The same capital mistake of false logic, mistaking its own greatest imbecility for conspicuous strength, has often alighted upon changes in terminology, or upon technical improvements of classification, as being in virtue no more than verbal changes. Here, again, we find Kant, though not the man meant by nature for clearing up delusions in the popular understanding, rightly contending that, in the science of algebra for instance, to impose new denominations was often enough to reveal new relations which previously had not been suspected. In reality we might go much further; and of some changes in algebraic terminology, (as particularly the invention of negative exponents,) I should say, that they had a value which could be adequately expressed only by such an analogy as might be drawn from the completion of a galvanic circle,

where previously it had been interrupted. Not merely an addition of new power, but the ratification of all the previous powers yet inchoate, had been the result. It was impossible to use adequately the initial powers of the science, until others had been added which distributed the force through the entire cycle of resistances.

In the present case, although the reader may fancy that such excessive solicitude for planting the great distinctions of value upon a true basis, is not likely to reap any corresponding harvest of results in subsequent stages of the science, further experience will satisfy him, that in all cases of dispute already existing, with the exception only of such as are still waiting for facts, and in all cases of efforts for the future progress of the science, it is really the ancient confusion overhanging this difficult theme of value which has been, or which will be, the sole retarding force. The question of value is that into which every problem finally resolves itself; the appeal comes back to that tribunal, and for that tribunal no sufficient code of law has been yet matured which makes it equal to the calls upon its arbitration. It is a great aggravation of the other difficulties in the science of Economy, that the most metaphysical part comes first. A German philosopher, who in that instance was aiming at anything but truth, yet with some momentary show of truth, once observed, with respect to the Catechism of our English Church, that it was the most metaphysical of books in a case which required the simplest. "I," said he, "with all my philosophy, cannot swim where these infants are to wade." For my own part, I utterly deny his inference. To be simple, to be easy of comprehension, is but the second condition for a good elementary statement of Christian belief, the first is, to be faithful. There is no necessity that all things should be at the earliest stage understood, — in part

they will never be understood in a human state, because they relate to what is infinite for an intellect which is finite. But there is a high necessity that, early in life, those distinctions should be planted which foreclose the mind, by a battery of prejudication and prepossession, against other interpretations, having, perhaps, the show of intelligibility, but terminating in falsehood, which means contradiction to Scripture. Now the condition of political economy is in this point analogous. Left to our own choice, naturally, none of us could wish to commence with what is most of all subtle, metaphysical, and perplexing. But no choice is allowed. Make a beginning at any other point, and the first explanation you attempt will be found to presuppose and involve all that you are attempting to evade; and in such a case, after every attempt to narrow the immediate question into a mere occasional skirmish, you will find yourself obliged to bring on the general conflict, under the great disadvantage of being already engaged with a separate question,- that is, on the most embarrassed ground you could possibly have selected. The great conflict, the main struggle, comes on at the very opening of the field; and simply because that is too hastily and insufficiently fought out, are all students forced, at one point or other, to retrace their steps, - nay, simply from that cause, and no other, it is possible at this day to affirm with truth, that, amongst many other strange results, no statesman in our British senate, and no leading critical review, has escaped that error in particular, that grossest and largest of errors, which is exposed in the fourth chapter, upon market value. It is because men are impatient of the preliminary cares, efforts, and cautions, such as unavoidably they submit to in mathematics, that upon what is known in Economy there is perpetual uncertainty, and for any inroads into what is yet unknown, perpetual insecurity.