The object of this section is, to obtain a better, a more philosophic, and a more significant expression for the two modes of exchange value than those of u and D, employed hitherto; and, at the same time, to explode the expressions adopted by previous writers, as founded upon a false view of their relations.

In any exchange value whatsoever, it has been agreed by all parties, that both u and D must be present; there must be a real utility or serviceableness before a man will submit to be affected by D,-i. e. before he will pay a price adjusted to the difficulty of attainment; and, versû vice, there must be this real difficulty of attainment before the simple fact of utility in the object will dispose him to pay for it, not by D in particular, but by anything at all. Now, though this is indispensable, yet, in the preceding section, it has been shown that, whilst both alike are present, one only governs. And a capital error has been in fancying that value in use (value derived from u) is necessarily opposed to value in exchange; whereas, being one horn of the two into which value in exchange divides, as often as the value in use becomes operative at all, it does itself become it constitutes-value in exchange, and is no longer co-ordinate to exchange value, (in which case it is wealth,) but subordinate; one subdivision of exchange value.

Now, then, having shown, under two different sets of circumstances, the one element and the other will with equal certainty take effect and become dominant, I will request the student to consider what, after all, is the true, sole, and unvarying consideration which acts upon the mind of the purchaser in the first intention of wishing to possess. As regards the price, what acts is alternately u and D; sometimes one, sometimes the other. But not so with regard to the general purpose of buying.

Here only one thing acts. No man ever conceived the intention of buying upon any consideration of the difficulty and expense which attend the production of an article. He wishes to possess, he resolves to buy, not on account of these obstacles, — far from it, but in spite of them. What acts as a positive and sole attraction to him, is the intrinsic serviceableness of the article towards some purpose of his own. The other element may hap

pen to affect the price, and, generally speaking, does affect it as the sole regulating force, but it can never enter at all into the original motive for seeking to possess the article; uniformly, it is viewed in the light of a pure resistance to that desire.

Here, then, present themselves two reasonable designations for supplanting U and D, which are far better, as being, 1st, in true logical opposition; and 2dly, as pointing severally each to its own origin and nature: u may be called affirmative, D negative. The latter represents the whole resistance to your possession of the commodity concerned; the former represents the whole benefit, the whole positive advantage, the whole power accruing to you from possession of this commodity. There is always an affirmative value, there is always a negative value, on any commodity bearing an exchange value,- that is, on any which can enter a market; but one only of these values takes effect at one time, under certain circumstances the affirmative value, under other and more ordinary circumstances, the negative. And, accordingly, as one or other becomes operative, as it ceases to be latent and rises into the effectual force, we may say of it, that it has passed into the corresponding price; affirmative value into affirmative price, negative value into negative price. For price is value ratified or made effectual, — the potential raised into the actual.

Many years ago, in a slight and unfinished sketch of what is most peculiar to Ricardo, (bearing the title of "The Templar's Dialogues,") I made it my business to show that a general confusion had pervaded Political Economy between two cardinal ideas, - a measure of value, and a ground of value; that no writer within my knowledge had escaped this confusion; that the former idea was demonstrably a chimera, an ens rationis, which never could be realized; that, except in one instance, 12 (viz. when needed as a test of the variations, whether real or only apparent, between successive stages of a paper currency,) no practical benefit would be derived from the realization of such a measure; whereas, on the other hand, a ground of value is so indispensable an idea, that without it not one step can be taken in advance.

The author of "A Critical Dissertation on Value," who does me much honor in saying (p. xxv. of Preface) that this little sketch of mine it was which "first suggested" his own work, gives two different opinions in the same page (p. 171) as to the original delivery of this broad distinction. In the text he says, "The author of the 'Templar's Dialogues on Political Economy' is the only writer who appears to me to have been fully aware of this confusion of two separate and distinct ideas. He traces it partly to an ambiguity in the word determine." But in a foot-note on this same sentence he thus corrects himself: "This was written before I had seen the second edition of Mr. Mill's Elements,' in which the distinction is for the first time introduced. His language on the point, however, is not uniformly consistent, as will be shown in the next chapter." I apprehend that, if any such distinction has been anywhere insisted upon consciously by Mr. Mill, it will be difficult to establish a priority for him. The fragment called "The Templar's

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Dialogues" was written at the end of 1821, and, to the best of my recollection, printed in the spring of 1822. Having never seen any edition whatsoever of Mr. Mill's "Elements" until this present return to the subject, (spring of 1843,) I obtained a copy from a public library. This happens to be the first edition, (which is clear from the fact, that no attempt occurs in this work at any distinction whatever between a "measure" and a "ground" of value,) and this bears the date of 1821 upon the titlepage. It seems probable, therefore, that the date of the second edition would be, at the earliest, 1822,. tion, however, which I have no means of deciding. But, be that as it may, two facts seem to discredit such a claim: 1st, that Mr. Mill, at p. iv. of the Preface, says, "I profess to have made no discovery"; whereas, beyond all doubt, a distinction which exposes suddenly a vast confusion of thought affecting the great mob of books upon this subject, is a discovery, and of very extensive use. 2dly, it turns out, from a charge alleged at p. 204, by the Dissertator on value, that Mr. Mill "confounds the standard with the cause of value." I understand him to mean, not that constructively Mr. Mill confounds these ideas, not that such a confusion can be extorted from his words though against his intention, but that formally and avowedly he insists on the identity of the two ideas. If so, there is an end of the question at once; for 66 a standard of value" is but a variety of the phrase 66 measure of value." The one, according to a scholastic distinction, (most beneficially revived by Leibnitz,) is a mere principium cognoscendi; the other (a ground of value) is a principium essendi.13 What qualifies an object to be a standard of value, that is, to stand still when all other objects are moving, and thus by consequence qualifies it to measure all changes of value between any two objects,

showing, as on a delicate scale, how much of the change has belonged to the one object, how much to the other, or whether either has been stationary: this is a thing which we shall never learn; because no such qualification can arise for any object, none can be privileged from change affecting itself. And, if liable to change itself, we need not quote Aristotle's remark on the Lesbian rule, to prove that it can never measure the changes in other objects. A measure of value is therefore not by accident impossible, but impossible by the very constitution of its idea; precisely as the principle of perpetual motion is not accidentally impossible, (by failure of all efforts yet made to discover it,) but essentially impossible so long as this truth remains in force, that it is impossible to propagate motion without loss. On the other hand, to seek for the cause or ground of value is not only no visionary quest, speculatively impossible and practically offering little use, but is a sine quâ non condition for advancing by a single step in political economy. Everything that enters a market, we find to have some value or other. Everything in every case is known to be isodynamic with some fraction, some multiple, or some certain proportion, of everything else. For this universal scale of relations, for this vast table of equations, between all commodities concerned in human traffic, a ground, a sufficient reason, must exist. What is it? Upon examination it is found that there are two grounds, because there are two separate modes of exchange value, for which I have deduced, as the adequate designations, the antithetic terms affirmative and negative. And if the reader will look forward to Section IV., which arrays before him a considerable list of cases under each form, he will perceive, (what in fact is my object in exposing those cases,) simultaneously, a proof of the necessity that such cases should exist, and an