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

drawbacks, the owner may succeed finally in obtaining for a first-rate horse (once known for good performances) as much as £4,000; whilst the whole value, computed on the resistance, may not have been more than as many hundreds. And this fact, though standing back in the rear as regards public knowledge, we may see daily advertised in effect by that common regulation which empowers the loser in many cases to insist on the winning horse being sold for £200, or a similar small sum. Were it not for this rule, which puts a stop to all such attempts without hazard of personal disputes, it would be a capital speculation for any first-rater, though beaten at Newmarket, to sweep all the stakes without effort on a tour through the provincial courses: justice would cease for the owners of inferior horses, and sport for the spectators of the competition.

The last case must have convinced the reader, that, however uncommon it may be, the cost-the resistance

- does not always take place even in the bosom of high civilization. And, by the way, amongst many other strange examples which we could state of anomalous values not considered in books of political economy, it would be easy to show that the very affirmative values of things have shifted under shifting circumstances. Pearls were most valued amongst the ancient Romans, diamonds and rubies amongst modern nations. Why? We are persuaded that, besides other reasons founded on resistance for the varying ratio of prices, this following affirmative reason has prevailed: the Roman festivals were all by daylight, under which sort of light pearls tell most at a distance. The modern are chiefly by lamplight, where the flashing and reverberated lustres of jewels are by far the more effective. The intrinsic powers have shifted. As an embellishment of female

beauty or distinction, pearls are no longer what they were. Affirmatively they have shifted, as well as in the resistance, or negatively.

SLAVES are valued alternately under both laws. Enter the slave-market at Constantinople; not in its now ruined state, but as it existed at the opening of this nineteenth century. The great majority of ordinary slaves were valued, simply as effects derived from certain known causes adequate to their continued reproduction. They had been stolen; and the cost of fitting out a similar foray, when divided suppose amongst a thousand captives, quoted the price of each ordinary slave. Even upon this class, however, although the cost (that is, on our previous explanation, the negative value) would form the main basis in the estimate, this basis would be slightly modified by varieties in the affirmative value. The cost had been equal; but the affirmative value would obviously vary under marked differences as to health, strength, and age. Was the man worth five or eight years' purchase?-that question must make a slight difference, even where the kind of service itself, that could be promised, happened to rank in the lowest ranges of the scale. A turnip cannot admit of a large range in its appreciation; because the very best is no luxury. But still a good turnip will fetch more than a bad one. We do not, however, suppose that this difference in turnips will generally go the length of making one sort sell at negative or cost value, the other at affirmative. Why? Simply because the inferiority in the turnip A, is owing to inferior cost on its culture; and the superiority in turnip B, to superior cost. But in the case of the slaves this is otherwise. Upon any practicable mode of finding their cost, it must prove to have been the same. The main costs of the outfit were, of necessity, common to the total products of the expe

dition. And any casual difference in the individual expenditure, from sickness or a longer chase, &c., must be too vague to furnish a ground of separate appreciation. Consequently the mob, the plebs, amongst the slaves, must be valued as the small ordinary pearls are valued,simply so many stone-weight on the basis of so much outlay.

But the natural aristocracy amongst the slaves, like the rarer pearls, will be valued on other principles. Those who were stolen from the terraces and valleys lying along that vast esplanade between the Euxine and the Caspian, had many chances in favor of their proving partially beautiful; by fine features and fine complexions at the least. Amongst the males, some would have a Mameluke value, as promising equestrian followers in battle, as capital shots, as veterinary surgeons, as soothsayers, or calculators of horoscopes, &c. All these would be valued affirmatively; not as effects that might be continually reproduced by applying the same machinery of causes to the resistance presented by the difficulties ; but inversely, as themselves causes in relation to certain gratifying effects connected with Mohammedan display or luxury. And if we could go back to the old slavemarkets of the Romans, we should meet a range of prices (corresponding to a range of accomplishments) as much more extensive than that of the Ottoman Porte, as the Roman civilization was itself nobler and ampler than that of Islamism. Generally, no doubt, the learned and the intellectual slaves amongst the Romans, such as Tiro, the private secretary of Cicero, were vernæ, slaves not immediately exotic, but homebred descendants from slaves imported in some past generation, and trained at their master's expense upon any promise of talent. Tutors (in the sense of pedagogues), physicians, poets, actors,