but to ask- -Ay, "but to ask" -What is it that he asks? Casaubon, we are concerned to report, construes the words thus,―ecquid inveniat damnandum? — what is it that he (the purchaser, I suppose) finds to complain of? But, besides that such a rendering could not be sustained verbally, it is still worse, that this sense, if it could be sustained, would be irrelevant. How would it be any substitution for the plain declaration of what price he asked, to turn round upon a buyer, and insist upon that buyer's saying what blemish could be detected in the article? And then, venerable Isaac, in which of your waistcoat-pockets did you find the word damnandum? And again, as the Greek expression had been plural, Tois vovμevois, to the purchasers, whence comes it that the verb is εύρισκει, and not pluraliter εἱσρικουσι? Ought Casaubon to have been satisfied with that blunder, so apparent on his construction, in the syntax?

Salmasius saw the truth at a glance, His version needs no justification: itself justifies itself. Thus it is: "TevρLOKEL; ad verbum quid invenit? hoc est, quid pretium mereat hæc res; quanti valeat?" Instead of saying at a word how much he demands, our knavish friend insists upon asking, T EVρIσKEL; "What does it fetch? What do we say, gentlemen, for this glorious sabre from Damascus? What price shall I have the honor of naming for these jewelled stirrups from Antioch?" The antithesis designed is gross and palpable: that it is the antithesis, and sharply drawn, between affirmative and negative price,-power price (in reference to the power in the article to fulfil human purposes) as opposed to resistance price, (or price measured by the amount of resistance to its reproduction) — price, in short, regulated by what x will produce in opposition to price regulated by what will produce x-all this (which is

but the same idea under three different formula) will appear at once by the following reflection: - What is it that Theophrastus inputes to him as the form of his trickery? (whatever might be its drift.) It is, that he evaded a question to himself, and turned round upon the company with a question of his own. Now, it is evident that the question of price, when thrown into the negative form as a question about the cost, was a question for him to answer, and not for the company. The cost could be known only to himself. But, when our friend has taken his resolution of translating the onus to the buyers, the only way to accomplish this is, — by throwing that question about price into a shape which only the company could answer. "Nay, gentlemen, how can I tell the value? Every man knows best what pleasure or what benefit he will draw from an article. Do you mind your own business: the cost is my business; but yours is, the worth of the thing for use; for your uses, not for mine." Scamp seems to have the best of it: their benefit from the article could not be affected by the terms on which he had acquired it. And thus even Hellas was up to this elementary distinction.26

SECTION VII. — MODES OF CAPITAL AS AFFECTING VALUE.

FINALLY, there arises a modification, first indicated by Ricardo, of value, from the different proportions in which capital fixed or circulating, predominates in the production of the articles. In this case, it can very often no longer be said that the prices of the resulting articles, according to the general rule of Ricardo, vary as the quantities of the producing labor, a disturbance of that law occurs.

The difference between what is called fixed capital and what is called circulating capital, has often been represented as shifting and shadowy. However, without entering upon that dispute further at this point, it will be sufficient to say, that they may be distinguished essentially. Circulating capital, in its normal idea, means any agent whatever used productively which perishes in the very act of being used. Thus, wages are conveniently said to be for a month, a week, or a day; but, in fact, a commensurate "moment" of wages perishes upon every instant of time. So of candlelight or gas, so of the porter or drink of any kind allowed by the master of a manufacturing establishment, none of it holds over for a second act of consumption. That part which may accidentally survive, is a part wholly distinct, not concerned at all in the first act. But in fixed capital this is otherwise. The workman's tools hold over from one act of production to a thousandth act. The same identical chisel, saw, grindstone, and not successive parts of them, have operated on many hundreds of cases; and by how much larger has been the range of these iterations, by so much the more intensely is the tool, engine, or machinery, entitled to the denomination of fixed. The leading case under circulating capital - what we chiefly think of—is wages; the leading case under fixed capital is machinery.

Now, in practice, although one kind of capital often preponderates, rarely is it found altogether to exclude the other. Where wages, for instance, form the main element of cost, there will yet be implements required; and, inversely, the most extensive machines require human vigilance, direction, and sometimes very considerable cooperation. But, though this is always the practical case, for the sake of trying the question, it is better to suppose

an extreme case, in which alternately the products arise exclusively from a machine, demanding no aid whatever from circulating capital, and again exclusively from human labor, demanding no aid whatever from capital fixed in stationary machines or instruments. On such an assumption, Ricardo undertakes to show that the commodities produced in the first case could sustain a far greater fall in price under the same change in the circumstances, and with the same injury (no more and no less) to the manufacturing capitalists, than those produced in the second.

He bids us suppose a case of circulating capital, where for the production of certain articles, two thousand pounds annually are paid in wages. We are to suppose an opposite case, in which two thousand pounds have been sunk in a very durable machine for producing a particular set of articles. Now, the annual profits will be the same for both parties: say at ten per cent, two hundred pounds. Consequently, we may say of the total products turned out from either establishment, that they will sell for two thousand two hundred pounds in the first case, for two hundred pounds in the second. Some trifle should be added for current repairs on the machine, and also another trifle as a sinking fund for replacing the machine finally, yet, as this machine is of variable duration, and in one case calculated to last for a century, both provisions are uncertain, and frequently too inconsiderable to affect the results, so that they may be safely neglected.

Now then, such being the circumstances of the two cases, suppose a rise in wages of two per cent to affect the prices of articles issuing from the first establishment. For a time this is peculiar to that establishment; it does not reach the second at first, because that by the case

pays no wages. But at last it reaches the second set of products also, through the rebound upon profits. The two per cent extra on wages will be forty pounds in the whole. Now, the loss upon wages must be borne by profits. But the forty pounds levied upon two hundred pounds will reduce the prices of the articles by that amount, i. e. twenty per cent; whereas the forty pounds levied upon the two thousand two hundred pounds, is simply transferred to the laborers, and the price continues as it was.

The case here imagined by Ricardo, and which is subsequently varied through lower stages of durability, greatly disturbing the violence of the results as to price, is exceedingly important by its tendency. And he goes on to show, what will naturally have suggested itself to the student, that between different sorts of fixed capital there is the same difference of tendency as between fixed and circulating. And why? Because the durability,

But on every year

which forms the ground of the generic distinction between fixed and circulating, varies also, and therefore becomes a ground for a special distinction, between any different orders of the fixed. When a man sows corn, which is intensely circulating capital, he seems absolutely and violently to throw it away. But this eventually comes back to him in a new shape. he renews this violent sacrifice of capital. Other modes of capital, in an opposite extreme, as a thrashing machine, last for his life or even longer. Now, the intermediate modes, such as horses, next cows, carts, rakes, as they outlast uses continually less durable, come nearer and nearer to the principle of the circulating capital; and consequently the difference of result upon price, under any changes occurring in productive agencies, tend more and more to become evanescent.