guishing between the useful and the noxious; it is clear that political economy has quite as little of either, for distinguishing between the truly useful and the spuriously useful. No man has paid for an article less or more because it is fascinating and ruinous; no man has paid for an article, either less or more, because it is dull and useful. On what fiction, therefore, or under what pretence, should political economy insinuate her proboscis into such inquiries? She may "hope that she is not intruding"; but it is certain that she is: and if a value can be tolerated which founds itself on the useful, then with equal reason may be introduced a value founded on the virtuous, or a value peculiar to Birmingham, to Wednesday, to Friday, and to Robinson Crusoe. 66 But whilst "the useful" must be deplorably impertinent as a subject of inquiry to political economy; the use " of any article in the sense of its purposes, functions, or teleological relations, as furnishing the ground for their values or prices, will offer one entire hemisphere in that field of science. And for this reason, because the purpose which any article answers, and the cost which it imposes, must eternally form the two limits, within which the tennis-ball of price flies backward and forward. Five guineas being, upon the particular article x, the maximum of teleologic price, the utmost sacrifice. to which you would ever submit, under the fullest appreciation of the natural purposes which x can fulfil, and then only under the known alternative of losing it if you refuse the five guineas; this constitutes the one pole, the aphelion or remotest point to which the price for you could ever ascend. But, on the other hand, it potential teleologic price, is quite consistent with this that, considered as a product, (not as itself a power for raising products,) measured in its value by the resistance to its own endless reproduction, x might not be worth more than five shillings. The cost of reproducing might be no more. And so long as that state of things subsisted, you would not listen to any call made upon your ultimate or teleologic appreciation. You would insist on the appreciation by cost-on the five shillings — so long as nothing hindered the reproduction upon those terms. Here you have the other pole, the perihelion, countervailing the higher extreme which comes into play, only in that case where circumstances suspend the free reproduction of the article. These, therefore, constitute the two limits between which the price must always be held potentially to oscillate. Consequently for itself this pair of limits, the use and the cost, -the use as the positive or virtual measure, the cost as the measure, by resistance, must be as all-important as the other pair of limits between the useful and the noxious must be impertinent. But, secondly, the former pair of limits is also the basis or ground of genesis from which the whole science is eventually developed. Thus, by way of brief illustration, a genuine picture of Da Vinci's or Raphael's, sells always on the principle of value in use, or teleologic value. An enlightened - this constitutes sensibility to the finest effects of art, the purpose or teleologic function to which the appreciation is referred; no regard is paid to the lower limit, founded on the difficulty of reproduction; that being now, and ever since the death of the great artists, a limit in the most absolute sense unapproachable. It is right, therefore, to say that the picture sells for its use, i. e. its capacity of being used or enjoyed; and that this price cannot now be intercepted (as so generally the affirmative prices of articles are) by a price founded upon cost of reproducing. So, again, the phial of prussic acid, which you buy in a remote Australian colony, accidentally drained of its supplies, at a price exorbitantly beyond its ordinary cost, must be classed as a price founded on value in use, notwithstanding that I will assume it to have been bought with a view to self-destruction. It would argue great levity of heart to view in the light of a useful thing, any agency whatever that had terminated in so sorrowful a result as suicide. Usefulness there was not in the prussic acid, as any power sufficient to affect or alter the price; but a purpose there was, however gloomy a purpose, a teleologic use attached to the acid, under the circumstances supposed. Now, if this purpose is considered in the price, then the use of the article, its teleologic function, has operated; and in bar of its more customary ground. But, it is perhaps retorted, "considered! why, the purpose, the application, the possible uses of an article, must always be considered in the price; for, unless it promised those uses, there would be no price at all." True; and this it is which always causes a confusion: that even in the common case where merely the cost it is which cuts off from a possible line that section of the line representative of the price, still it is the affirmative uses of the article which make it first of all conceivable for any such line to exist. The cost cuts off, suppose from a valuation of twenty, (as corresponding to the affirmative use of the article,) six as corresponding to itself; but that the twenty should at all exist, without which even the six would be impossible, is due originally, and in all cases, to the affirmative ground, - not to the negative, and in those cases even where the negative price actually takes effect. however, does not disturb the principle, — that whilst the affirmative value only can cause any fund at all to be available for price alternately, it is either that affirmative This, value or the negative value of cost, which settles how much out of this fund shall be in fact disposable for price. Here, for instance, as to the prussic acid, always it must be the capacity of this acid to meet a purpose which could cause any price at all to arise. And this effect of affirmative value must always continue to act, even when the ordinary state of things shall have been restored by some English vessel bringing an abundant supply of the acid, and after the cost or negative value shall have been reinstalled as the operative price. This primary and latent action of the affirmative value must not be for a moment forgotten. In fact, the confusion arising out of this one oversight has been the real cause why the idea of value has never yet been thoroughly and searchingly investigated. It must be remembered that in every case of price alike, whether terminating in a negative or affirmative result, invariably and necessarily it commences on affirmative grounds. Without a purpose contemplated, no article could be entertained in the thoughts for a moment as even potentially susceptible of a price. But, secondly, this being presumed to be realized as a sine qua non condition, then always a twofold opening arises: the original, intrinsic, affirmative value, has first determined the possible quantity of money, &c., available in the extreme case for price, say twenty. But in the last step it is either this affirmative value, or the negative, which settles how much of that twenty shall be cut off and rendered effective, whether the entire twenty, or perhaps only one. And in the very delicate management of forces so contradictory coming always into a collision, or into the very closest juxtaposition, it cannot be wondered at that the popular and hurried style of thinking in economy has led most men into confusion. Before concluding, it may be well to remark that even the Pagan Greeks, ignorant as they necessarily were on political economy, perceived the main outline of distinction between affirmative and negative price. in A passage exists in the "Characteristics" of Theophrastus, which presents us with this distinction in a lively form, and under circumstances which will prove interesting to the reader. By pure accident, this passage came under the separate review of two eminent scholars, · Casaubon and Salmasius. Greater names do not adorn the rolls of scholarship. Casaubon was distinguished for his accuracy in the midst of his vast comprehensiveness; and every page of his writing is characterized by an overruling good sense. Salmasius, on the other hand, was too adventurous to be always safe. He was the man for riding steeple-chases,- for wrestling with extravagant difficulties, or for dancing upon nothing. Yet, with all the benefit from this caution of his intellectual temper, upon the passage Theophrastus did Casaubon write the most inexcusable nonsense; whilst the youthful Salmasius, at one bound of his agile understanding, cleared the "rasper" in a style which must have satisfied even the doubts of Isaac. The case illustrates powerfully the uselessness of mere erudition in contending with a difficulty seated in the matter, substantially in the thing, and not in the Greek or Latin expression. Here, in Theophrastus, it was not Greek, it was political economy, that could put it to rights. I will give the very words, construing as I go along, for the benefit of non-Grecian readers. Και πωλων τι, and when selling any article, μη λεγειν, not to say, (i. e. it is amongst his characteristic traits not to say,) τοις ώνουμενοις, to the purchasers, ποσου ἂν ἀποδοιτο, in exchange for how much he would deliver it, àλλ' èpwτạv, -- |