With one Alnaschar kick he destroys the whole edifice upon which he has employed himself so painfully. But is this confusion of the idea the worst result from the defeated doctrine? By no means. A crazy maxim has got possession of the whole world; viz. that price is, or can be, determined by the relation between supply and demand. The man who uses this maxim does not himself mean it. He cannot say, "I think thus; you think otherwise." He does not think thus. Try to extract price for wheat from the simple relation of the supply to the demand. Suppose the supply to be by one-tenth part beyond the demand, what price will that indicate for eight imperial bushels of the best red wheat, weighing sixty-four pounds a bushel? the price be a shilling, or will it be a thousand pounds? You guess that the first would be too little, and the second too much. Perhaps so; but what makes you "guess" this? Why, simply, your past experience. You fancy yourself ascertaining the price by the relation of supply to demand, and, in fact, you are ascertaining it by privately looking for the cost in past years; the very thing that you had pledged yourself to dispense with. Will Now, mark how a man does really proceed in solving such a problem. He finds upon enquiry that an excess in the supply of wheat by one-tenth, will cause a depreciation perhaps by one-sixth: the accident of excess has told to the extent of a sixth. But of what? A sixth of what? Manifestly, a sixth upon the last price of wheat. The pretended result, that could be known by knowing the mere amount of excess, now turns out to be a mere function of the former cost, previous to the depreciation. But that price includes the whole difficulty; for always the price of wheat will express the cost in the first place, as the principal (oftentimes the sole) element. This call c. Then, secondly, the other price will represent any (the movable) element of the modification upon this c, by means of too much or too little wheat in the market. This modifying element of quantity call ; and then any existing price in any particular corn-market will always be co in the case where there is a deficiency; always c — in the case where there is an excess; always c (i. e. a mononomial) in the case where there is neither deficiency nor excess, consequently where market price does not take place, but, on the contrary, the price which contradicts market price, or, in Adam Smith's language, natural price. Thus it is shown, by pursuing the problem to the last, that every possible case of technical market value (that is, not value in a market, but value in a market whose equilibrium has been disturbed) cannot by possibility rest upon a single law, (whether cost on the one hand, or relation of supply to demand on the other,) but of necessity upon two laws; briefly, that it must be a Binomial. It is scandalous and astonishing that Adam Smith, the introducer of this important distinction, should himself be the first, in very many cases, to confound it with its own formal antithesis. It is still more scandalous that Ricardo-actually making war upon the logic of Adam Smith, and founding his theory upon a much severer logic—should equally have confounded the law of market value with the direct contradiction to that law. Both did so under the misleading of a verbal equivocation* in the term "market;" and the possibility of this equivocation would be banished henceforth by substituting for "market value" the term Binomial value. * "Verbal equivocation.' -What equivocation ? some readers will say. For though a false result is somehow obtained, it does not instantly appear how the word market has, or can have, led to this result by two senses. But it has. In one of its uses, and that the commonest by very much, the word market indicates a FACT, and nothing more, viz. simply the ubi of the sale. But, in another use, this word indicates a LAW, viz. the conditions under which the sale was made; which conditions are the three several states of the market as to the balance existing between the quantity of any article and the public demand for it. Every market, and in all times, must offer of every commodity, either first, too much for the demand, or secondly, too little, or thirdly, neither too much nor too little; and the term "market value," when pointing to such conditions, points to a coefficient which in part governs the price. But in the popular use, where it expresses only a fact, it points to a mere inert accident having no tendency to affect the price. CHAPTER III. WAGES. THERE are four elements in the condition of every working body, which (like so many organs of a complex machine) must eternally operate by aiding or by thwarting each other. According to the social circumstances at the time given, these elements must act either in the same direction or in different directions; and conformably to the modes of combining the action under four distinct causes, operating by different proportions, and often in conflicting directions, must be the practical result the tendencies upwards or downwards which will affect wages universally. The four elements are these :— 1. The rate of movement in the POPULATION: Is that steadily advancing or slowly receding? Does that tend to raise the value of wages, or to depress it? 2. The rate of movement in the national CAPITAL: Is that advancing or receding? And does it pro tanto therefore tend to raise or to depress the rate of wages? 3. The fluctuations in the price of necessaries, but, above all, of FOOD: Are those fluctuations from one decennium to another tending, upon the whole, to an advance or to a decline? Is the price of food from century to century, when taken with its complementary adjunct in the price of clothes, fire, and lodging, such as, upon the whole, to sustain wages to stimulate wages or to depress them? 4. The traditional STANDARD OF LIVING: Is that fortunately high and exacting in its requisitions? or is "man's life," to cite a strong word from Shakspeare, (whose profound humanity had fixed his attention upon the vast importance of a high scale in domestic comfort,) -"is man's life cheap as brutes' ?" Is it in short an old English standard* which prevails, or a modern Irish “ An old English standard.”——Upon this subject there exists a most inveterate prejudice in Scotland, which ought not to be hard of overthrow, being absolutely unfounded; only that to be attacked with success, it must be attacked upon a new principle. It is universally held by the Scotch, or rather postulated as a point confessed and notorious, that the English, as compared with themselves, are a nation luxurious in diet. Now, as to the Scottish gentry, this notion is a mere romance; between them and the English gentry there is no difference whatever in that respect. But, on descending below the gentry, through all the numerous classes of society, you will certainly find a lower diet prevailing in Scotland; and, secondly, a lower regard to diet. As compared with the Scottish, it cannot be denied that the English working classes, and the lower class of shopkeepers, were (I wish it could be said are) considerably more luxurious as to diet. I know not whether this homely diet of Scotland has, upon the whole, proved an advantage for her; very sure I am that a more generous diet has |