treating in this fifth section. I have called it negative value; but, call it as you please, what is the eternal ground which sustains it? Adam Smith replied in one word, that it is LABOR. Well, is it not? Why, at one time it might have been said, with some jealousy, that it was; for this elliptical phrase might have been used by Ricardo himself to denote all which it ought to denote; and, without examination, it could not be known that Adam Smith had not used it in this short-hand way. But proofs would soon arise that in fact he had not. Suppose him questioned thus :- "By the vague general phrase 'labor,' do you mean quantity of labor, or do you mean value of labor? Price in a market, you affirm, is governed and controlled by labor; and therefore, as double labor will produce double value, as decuple labor will produce decuple value, so, inversely, from double value you feel yourself at liberty to infer double labor, and from decuple value to infer decuple labor. In this we all agree, we moderns that are always right, and our fathers that were always wrong. But when you say that, when you utter that unimpeachable truth, do you mean, that from double value could be inferred double quantity of labor; as that in Portugal, for instance, because the same cotton stockings will cost thirty shillings which in England may be had for fifteen, therefore two days' labor is required, on the bad Portuguese system, to equal in effect of production one day's labor on the English system? Is this what you mean ? Or, on the contrary, is it this, that therefore the value of labor (that is, wages) may be inferred to be double in Portugal of what it is in England?" Mirrors are undoubtedly cheaper by much amongst us English people in 1843 than they were in the year of Waterloo. I saw, in 1832, a small one of eight feet high, the very fellow to one which, in 1815, had been used for the

very same purpose, of filling up a five feet recess, overarched by wooden carvings, between two separate compartments of a library, and thus connecting the two into the unity of one. In every point of dimensions, of reputed quality, of framing, and of application-the two mirrors were the same, and both had been manufactured on a special order to meet the disposable vacancy; yet the one of 1815 had cost forty-eight guineas, the one of 1832 had cost only thirty pounds. Now in reporting from Adam Smith labor as the ground of value, and in applying that doctrine to this case of the mirrors, is it your construction of the word "labor" that the young mirror had cost so much less than the old mirror in consequence of fewer days' work being spent upon it, or in consequence of the same precise days' work (no more and no fewer) being paid at a lower rate? I abstract from the quality of money in which the wages happened to be paid. We are all aware that, between 1819 and 1832, there was full time to accomplish that augmented value of money which the believers in the war depreciation 21 suppose to have been the natural antistrophe, or inverse series of motions pursued by our English currency under the speculative measures of Sir Robert Peel in his earlier years. For a moment, therefore, the reader might fancy that the cheapness of the one mirror was no more than an expression of a currency re-established in power, and that the dearness of the other had been a mere nominal dearness. But this fancy is destroyed by a comparison with the mass of other commodities, all of which must have been equally affected (if any had) by a fall and rise in the value of money. The dilemma, therefore, resolves itself into these alternative propositions; viz. that the later and cheaper of the mirrors had been produced through some smaller quantity

of labor, or else that the same unvarying quantity of labor had been obtained at a very much less rate of wages. Now, which of the two alternative explanations does that man declare for, who adopts the vague language of labor being the foundation of price? Does he make his election for quantity of labor, or for value of labor? Either choice will satisfy the mere understanding for the moment, since either will explain the immediate phenomenon of a large, and else unaccountable difference in the prices of the two mirrors: but one only will satisfy Political Economy, because one only will stand the trial of those final consequences into which economy will pursue it.

Greatly it has always surprised me, that Ricardo should not have introduced in his first chapter that experimentum crucis which, about four years later, I found myself obliged to introduce in "The Templar's Dialogues"; because, as the matter now stands, Ricardo's main chapter is not so much a proof of his new theory as an illustration of it. For instance, he begins by saying that, in the earliest period of society, the hunter and the fisherman would exchange their several commodities on the basis laid down; viz. a day's produce of the one against a day's produce of the other. 22 But if any opponent had gone a step further, so as next to suppose the case of a master fisherman employing twenty journeymen, and the hunter employing a similar body of ministerial agents, the whole question under discussion would have come back in full force upon the disputants. Circumstances would immediately have been imagined under which the quantities of labor had altered for the same produce, or (which is the same thing) where the produce had altered under an unvarying quantity of labor. Opposite circumstances would have been imagined, where not the quantities, but the rewards, or prices of labor, had altered; and then,

thirdly, circumstances would have been imagined where both alterations had been in motion simultaneously, the one in the fisherman's business, the other in the hunter's. And the resulting prices would have been affirmed to be the same under all these varying circumstances, or to be in any degree capriciously different, according to the views of the writer. Simply as illustration against illustration, one case is as good as another, until it is shown to involve an absurdity. Now, it is true that obscurely, and in a corner, Ricardo does indicate an absurdity flowing from the notion of wages governing the prices of the articles produced. But this absurdity should have been put forward pointedly and conspicuously, in the front of the main illustrative case between fishermen and hunters; whereas, at present, it is only said, that thus does the hunter, thus does the fisher ; and upon either doing otherwise, that the other will remonstrate. To be sure he will. But the case demanded a proof that neither party could do otherwise. Such a proof let me now attempt.

CASE THE FIRST,-where the quantity of labor governs the price.

A beaver hat of the finest quality has hitherto cost two guineas. At length, after centuries of beaver-hunting, which have terminated in altering the very habits of the animal, compelling it to become shy and recluse where once it had been careless and gregarious, 23 naturally the price of a beaver hat will begin to advance. But why? What is the essential movement that has taken place? The novice will object that it is not in the quantity of producing labor; for assuredly the process of manufacturing a beaver-skin into a hat will not have been retrograde: if it changes at all, it will be for the better; instead of the former process, will gradually be

substituted a shorter. Or, if it should seem not so much a short process that superseded a long one, as a cheap process that superseded a dear one, still, in any case, it would be for the better. And in fact, though a cheaper process may seem at first sight different from a shorter, eventually they will be found to coincide. For how can it be cheaper? Either first by dispensing, through some compendious contrivance, with part of the labor (in which case it is cheaper, obviously because it is shorter); or, secondly, because something (whether implement or material) at a low price is substituted for something formerly used at a higher price. But in that case why was the old displaced article at a higher price? Simply because it required more labor to produce it. This truth is illustrated in the present objection: the novice objects that the hat does not cost more, on account of more labor being required to manufacture a hat, but because the raw material is more costly: and this strikes him as being quite a separate element in the cost of an article, and perfectly distinct from the labor spent in producing that article. All this, however, is misplaced ingenuity. The raw material seems to be distinct from the producing labor; but in fact it is the same thing: it is part of the producing labor. contemplated in an earlier stage. The beaver can be valued only as the hat is valued, on the same principle applied at a different time. How is the manufacturing process more or less costly? it requires more or less labor. How else is the beaver more or less costly? That also, viz. the raw material, can vary in cost only as it requires more or less labor; that is, twenty men, fifteen, or ten, within the same number of weeks, to secure a given quantity of beaver-skins. The manufacturer of rum, of arrack, of ale, of perry, speaks of the labor employed in his own particular pro

Exactly as