afford to take? and is turned against the buyer, What is the utmost that you, rather than lose the article, will consent to give? The simple demand for variety, as one amongst the resources of hospitality, might long avail to support a rack-price (that is, an affirmative price) for salmon, if it were ever to reach it. People are called upon daily to buy what may allow a reasonable choice to their guests; that is, what may be agreeable as one luxury amongst others, even though to their own estimate it may not avail as one luxury against others.

CROTON OIL.-This case of salmon represents that vast order of cases where the article is within limits. Press as you will upon the desire of a man to obtain the article for its intrinsic qualities, for its power to gratify, (which, as in itself capable of no exact estimate, might seem susceptible of an unlimited appreciation,) there is, however, in all such cases, or very nearly all, a practical limit to this tendency. Easily the article may rise to a price double or triple of what would notoriously suffice to overcome the resistance, or cost. But this very ascent brings it at every step into direct competition with articles of the same class usually reputed to be better. It is of no consequence, in such a competition, whether the superior article is selling on the principle of affirmative value or of negative,-selling for its intrinsic qualities or its cost. Turbot, for instance, being at four shillings a pound, whether that four shillings represents a value far beyond the cost, or simply the cost, naturally the candidate for salmon will pause, and compare the two fishes with a single reference to the intrinsic power of each for the common purpose of gratifying the palate. If, then, he shared in the usual comparative estimate of the two as luxury against luxury, here at once a limit is reached beyond which monopoly of salmon could never exten

sively force it. Peculiar palates are, for that reason, rare. Limits, therefore, are soon found, and almost universally.

But now we pass to a case where no such limits exist. About nineteen years ago were introduced, almost simultaneously, into the medical practice of this country two most powerful medicines. One of these was the sulphate of quinine; the other was croton oil, amongst drastic medicines of a particular class the most potent that is known. Both were understood to be agents of the first rank against inflammatory action; and, with respect to the last, numerous cases were reported in which it had, beyond a doubt, come in critically to save a patient, previously given up by his medical attendants. Naturally these cases would be most numerous during the interval requisite for publishing and diffusing the medicine, -an interval which, with our British machinery, is brief. There was time enough, however, to allow of a large number of cases in which it had not been introduced until the eleventh hour. Two of these came under my personal knowledge, and within the same fortnight. Both were cases of that agonizing disorder, inflammation affecting the intestines. One was near to London: a mounted messenger rode in for the medicine; returned within a hundred minutes; and the patient was saved. The other case lay near to Nottingham: the person despatched with the precious talisman to the post-office, then in Lombard Street, found the mail just starting; but, by an inflexible rule of office, neither guard nor coachman was at liberty to receive a parcel not entered in the way-bill: the man had not the presence of mind to intrust it with one of the passengers; the patient was already in extremity; and, before the medicine reached Nottingham by a coach leaving London the next morning, he had expired.

Now, in the case of such a magical charm, to have or

to want which was a warrant for life or for death, it is clear that, amongst rich men, the holder of the subtle elixir, the man who tendered it in time, might effectually demand an Oriental reward. "Ask me to the half of my kingdom!" would be the voluntary offer of many a millionnaire. And if this undoubted power, occasionally held by individual surgeons, were not neutralized by the honor governing our medical body, cases of excessive prices for critical operations would not be rare. Accordingly Maréchal Lannes in 1809, who had been accustomed in his original walk of life to a medical body far less liberal or scrupulous than ours, used the words of the dying Cardinal Beaufort,-"I'll give a thousand pounds," he exclaimed convulsively, "to the man who saves my life!" Not a very princely offer, it must be owned; and we hope it was not livres that he meant. But the case was hopeless; both legs shattered at his age were beyond art. Had it even been otherwise, Baron Larrey was a man of honor; and, under any circumstances, would have made the same answer, - viz. that, without needing such bribes, the surgeons would do their utmost.

Still the case requires notice. Accidentally in our British system the high standard of professional honor turns aside such mercenary proposals, they have become insults. But it is clear, that, per se, the value of the aid offered is very frequently in the strictest sense illimitable. Not only might the few monopolists of exquisite skill in operating, or the casual monopolist of an amulet, a charm, like the croton oil, press deeply upon the affirmative value of this one resource to a man else sealed for death: but also it is certain that, in applying their screw, medical men would rarely find themselves abreast of those limits which eternally are coming into

play (as we have illustrated in the case of salmon) with regard to minor objects. A man possessing enormous strength of wrist, with singular freedom from nervous trepidations, is not often found; how very rarely, then, will he be found amongst those possessing an exquisite surgical science! Virtually, in any case where a hair'sbreadth swerving of the hand will make the difference of life and death, a surgeon thus jointly favored by nature and by art holds a carte blanche in his hands. This is the potential value of his skill; and he knows it; and generally, we believe, that out of the British empire 20 it would be used to some extent. As it is, what value do we find it to be which really takes place in such instances? It is simply the resistance value. Disdaining to levy a ransom, as it were, upon the fears and yearnings after life in the patient, or upon the agitations of his family, the honorable British surgeon or physician estimates only the cost to himself; he will take no account of the gain to the other party. He must compute the cost of his journey to and fro; the cost in practice lost during his absence from home; and that dividend upon the total costs of his education to which a case of this magnitude may fairly pretend. These elements compose the resistance to his being in the situation to offer such aid; and upon these he founds his expectation.

By this time, therefore, the reader understands sufficiently our distinctions of plus and minus· power and resistance-value. He understands them to be the two ruling poles towards which all possible or conceivable prices must tend; and we admit that, generally, the resistance value will take place, because generally, by applying an equal resistance, the object (whatever it be) may be produced. But by way of showing that it is no romantic idea to suppose a case of continual recurrence where

the affirmative value will prevail over the negative, where an object will draw upon the purchaser not for the amount of cost, (including as we need not say, the ordinary rate of profit,) but for an amount calculated according to the intrinsic powers, we will give the case of

HUNTERS, as against RACE-HORSES. -If a man were to offer you a hunter, master of your weight, and otherwise satisfactory, you would readily give him a fair price. But what is a fair price? That which will reproduce such a hunter, his cost; the total resistance to his being offered in this condition. Such is the value, and such the

law of value, for a hunter

a racer.

But it is no longer such for When a breeder of horses finds one amongst

receive a cost

his stud promising first-rate powers of contending at Newmarket, he is no longer content to price for the horse, or anything like it.

The man who (as a master of pearl-divers) sells the ordinary seed pearls at the mere cost and fair profit on the day's wages which have earned them, when he reaps a pearl fit to embellish the schah of Persia's crown, looks to become a petty schah himself. He might sell it with a profit by obtaining even that whole day's wages, during one hour of which it was produced: but will he? No more than, amongst ourselves, the man who, by a twenty-guinea lottery-ticket, drew a prize of £10,000, would have sold his ticket for a profit of cent per cent upon its cost. The breeder of the race-horse would take into his estimate the numerous and splendid stakes which the horse might hereafter win; sometimes at Epsom, on one Derby day, as much as £5,000 to £6,000; to say nothing of the Leger at Doncaster, or other enormous prizes. It is true that the chances of mortality and failure must also be weighed and unluckily no insurance has yet been done on racers, except as regards sea-risk. But after all

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