illustration of the particular circumstances under which each arises. But first, and before all other remarks which he will be likely to make on this Čevyos,—this two-headed system of cases, -I anticipate the remark which follows; viz. that, such and so broad being the distinction between this double system of cases, it is not possible that former economists should have overlooked it. "Under some name or other," he will say, "I am satisfied that these distinctions must have been recognized." He will be right. The distinction has been recognized,—has been formally designated. And what are the designations? Everywhere almost the same: the price, which corresponds to the difficulties, has been properly called the cost price, as representing in civilized societies the total resistance which is usually possible to the endless reproduction of an article. So far there is no blame: but go forward; go on to the opposite mode of which I have called the affirmative price. is it that most economists designate that? “monopoly price," or "scarcity price." But monopoly, but scarcity, these are accidents; these are impertinences, ―i. e. considerations not pertinent, not relevant to the case; or, to place the logic of the question under the clearest light, these express only the conditio sine quâ non, or negative condition. But is that what we want? Not at all: we want the positive cause technically, the causa sufficiens- of this antagonist price. That cause is found, not in the scarcity or the monopoly, - Aristotle forbid such nonsense! (how could a pure absence or defect of importation, how could a mere negation, produce a robust positive ens, -a price of sixty guineas?) No; but in something that has existed antecedently to all monopoly or scarcity; in a strong affirmative attraction of the article concerned; in a positive adaptation of this price, — to that By what name They call it article to each individual buyer's individual purposes. True, the accidental scarcity brings this latent affirmative cause into play; but for that scarcity, this latent cause might have concealed itself for generations, — might never have acted. The scarcity it is, the absolute stoppage to all further receipts of the article from its regular reproduction, which has enabled something to rise into action as the regulator of price. But what is that something? You say, popularly, that the absence of a sentinel caused the treasury to be robbed: and this language it would be pedantic to censure, because the true meaning is liable to no virtual misconstruction. But everybody would censure it, if the abstraction of "absence" were clothed with the positive attributes of a man, and absence were held responsible for the larceny to the exculpation of the true flesh-and-blood criminal. The case is in all respects the same as to scarcity: the scarcity creates the opening, or occasion for "something" to supersede the D, or negative value; but that something is the u value, - the affirmative value. This must be too self-evident to require any further words: the technical term of "scarcity value," adopted as the antithesis of "cost value" by Ricardo, by Mr. M'Culloch, and many beside, will not be defended by anybody, except under the idea that the false logic which it involves is sure to undergo a correction from the logical understanding. But it is unsafe trusting too much to that. In the hurry of disputation it would be too late to revise our terms, to allow for silent errors, and to institute pro húc vice rectifications. It is indispensable to the free movement of thought, that we should have names and phrases for expressing our ideas, upon which we can rely at all hours as concealing no vestige of error. Now, against the technical term in possession, besides the con clusive reasons already exposed, there may be alleged these two sufficient absurdities as consequences to which it is liable: 1st. That in any case of such scarcity actually realized, the scarcity could not be imagined to create a price; because neither as an absolute scarcity, nor as graduated to any particular point, could it have more relation to one price than to any other, to a shilling than to a thousand guineas. As rationally might it be said, that the absence of the sentinel, according to the degrees of its duration, had created the costliness of the articles robbed from the treasury. 2d. That if such a shadow as a blank negation could become a positive agency of causation, still there would arise many monstrous absurdities. One case will suffice as an illustration of all. Suppose the scarcity as to two articles to be absolute, in other words, the greatest possible, or beyond any finite degree, then if the scarcity were the acting cause of the new price, which has superseded the old D price, being the same in both cases, this scarcity must issue in producing the same price for both articles: whereas the true cause, which has been brought into action by the scarcity and the consequent abolition of D, being in reality the U, or utility value, (pushed to its maximum,) will soon show decisively that the one article may not reach the price of half a crown, whilst the other may run up to a thousand guineas. It is useless to talk of "words" and "names as being shadows, so long as words continue to express ideas, and names to distinguish actual relations. Verbalism it is in fact, and the merest babble of words, which can substitute a pure defect so aerial an abstraction as a want or an absence - for a positive causal agency. That is really scholastic trifling. The true agencies in the case under discussion are eternally and alternately D and U,the resistance to the reproduction of the article, or the power in use of that article. Finally, it has been shown why these should be termed the affirmative and negative values of the article; and from the moment when either value takes effect, (ceases to be latent, and becomes operative upon the market,) should be termed severally affirmative and negative price.14 SECTION IV. ON THE TWO MODES OF EXCHANGE VALUE, AFFIRMATIVE AND NEGATIVE. THE business of this present section is chiefly to illustrate by cases the two possible modes of exchange value; viz. the alternate modes as founded on a negative principle, and as founded on an affirmative principle. Any reader, therefore, who is already satisfied with this distinction and its grounds, may pass on (without disturbing the nexus or logical dependency of the parts) to Section V. That general principle which governs the transition under the appropriate circumstances from negative to affirmative value, might be brought forcibly before the reader by a political case drawn from the civil administration of ancient Rome. Any foreigner coming to Rome before the democratic basis of that republic had given way, would have found some difficulty (when reviewing the history of Rome) in accounting for the principle which had governed the award of triumphs. "I am at a loss,” he would say, "to reconcile the rule which in some instances appears to have prevailed with that which must have prevailed at others. In one case I see a rich province - overrun, and no triumph granted to the conqueror; in another, I see a very beggarly (perhaps even a mutinous and unmanageable) province, no source of strength, but rather of continual anxiety to Rome, -made the occasion of a most brilliant triumph, and even of a family title, such as 'Macedonicus' or 'Isauricus,' the most gratifying personal distinction which Rome had to confer." Here would seem a contradiction; but the answer could dispel it. "We regard," it would be said on behalf of Rome, "two separate and alternate considerations. No province, whether poor or rich, has ever been annexed to our republic which had not this primary condition of value,—that it tended to complete our arch of empire. By mere locality, as one link in a chain, it has tended to the arrondissement of our dominions, the orb within which our power circulates." So far any province whatsoever added within the proper Mediterranean circuit, had always a claim upon the republic for some trophy of honor. But to raise this general claim to a level with triumphal honors, we Romans required 15 that one or other of these· two extra merits should be pleaded:— either, first, that the province, though not rich, had been won by peculiarly hard fighting; or, secondly, that, though won with very slight efforts, the province was peculiarly rich. The primary, the indispensable value, as a link in the Roman chain, every province must realize, that tended to complete the zone drawn round the Mediterranean. Even a wilderness of rocks would have that value. But this being presumed, of course, as an advantage given by position without merit in the winner, we required, as the crest of the achievement towards justifying a triumph, either the affirmative value of great capacities for taxation, or the negative value of great difficulties overcome in the conquest. Cilicia, for example, returned little in |