what else? Every distinct species of labour is a distinct commodity, just like every distinct species of wine, which has a value of its own determined by the general Equation of Economics. How can the value of the labour of carpenters be affected by the demand or supply of the labour of artists? or the value of the labour of ploughmen be affected by the demand or supply of Civil Engineers? Even if any one particular species of labour be selected, it is no more fitted to be a measure of value than any other commodity.

11. Labour, then, being alleged by Smith to be the measure of value, and the quantity of labour embodied in any commodity being asserted to be its value, by a gradual and natural perversion of ideas it came to be said that Labour is the CAUSE of all value. But to confound the measure of value with the cause of value is as absurd as to confound the measure of Force with the cause of Force; or to confound the measure of Heat with the cause of Heat; to suppose that the Thermometer is the cause of Heat, or that the Barometer is the cause of the weight of the air; or the Anemometer the cause of the force of the wind!

Money, corn, and many other commodities have been used as measures of Value; therefore, by a parity of reasoning, it might just as well be said that gold, corn, or these other measures of value, are the cause of all Value.

The confusion of ideas between Labour being the measure of Value, and Labour being the cause of all Value, is so palpable that it scarcely needs to be enforced by illustration; but yet it may be as well to give one. Suppose I wish to buy a tree or a cow, I might very well agree to give so many days' labour, or so much money the proceeds of so many days' labour, in exchange for the tree or the cow. The quantity of labour or money I am willing to give for the tree or the cow is the measure of my desire to possess them, but how is either of them the cause of the Value of the tree or the cow?

12. Ricardo has fallen into exactly the same confusion as Smith regarding Cost and Value. The very first day that Bentham read his work he wrote back to him that it was entirely founded on a confusion between Cost and Value. Whately says 1 Logic. Appendix. Ambiguous terms: Value.

"Mr. Ricardo appears to set out by admitting Adam Smith's definition of Value in exchange. But in the greater part of his "Principles of Political Economy he uses the word as synonymous with Cost: and by this one ambiguity has rendered his great work a long enigma." He begins by defining the value of a thing to be the quantity of any other commodity it will exchange for, and then, in chapter 20, he says "I cannot agree with M. Say in estimating the value of a commodity by the abundance of other commodities for which it will exchange." He estimates the value of all things by the labour employed in producing them, and says that labour is the foundation of all exchangeable value. He entirely denies that natural agents, such as the sun, the air, &c., can add exchangeable value to any product. He says-" They are serviceable to us by increasing the abundance of production, by making men richer, by adding to value in use; but as they perform their work gratuitously, as nothing is paid for the use of air, of heat, of water, the assistance which they afford us adds nothing to value in exchange!"

A multitude of writers have asserted that Labour is the cause of all Wealth.

Thus, McCulloch says1-"When it is said that an article or product is possessed of exchangeable value it is meant that there are individuals disposed to give some quantity of labour, or of some other article or product, obtainable only by means of labour, in exchange for it.

"In its natural state matter is very rarely possessed of any immediate or direct utility, and is invariably destitute of value. The labour required to appropriate matter, and to fit and prepare it for our use, is the only means by which it acquires value, and becomes Wealth.”2

"Smith has shewn that Labour is the only source of wealth."3 "The labour which is thus employed is the only source of wealth. Nature spontaneously furnished the matter of which all commodities are made; but until labour has been applied to appropriate that matter, or adapt it to our use, it is wholly destitute of value, and is not, nor ever has been, considered as forming wealth."4

Quoting from Locke, he says"-"None of the spontaneous Principles of Political Economy, p. 2.

2 lbid., p. 148.

• Ibid., p. 53, • Ibid., p. 61, $ Ibid., p. 67.

products of nature has any value except what it derives from the labour required for its appropriation. The utility of such products makes them be demanded, but it does not give them value, which can be communicated only by the agency of voluntary labour of some sort or another. An object which it does not require any portion of labour to appropriate, or to adapt to our use, may be of the very highest utility; but as it is the free gift of nature, it is utterly impossible that it should possess the smallest value!"

"It is to labour, therefore, and to it only, that man owes everything possessed of value."1

So many other writers have followed in the same strain: thus Carey, the well known American Economist, says “That labour is the sole cause of Value."-" Pearls may be found by those who do not seek them, and meteoric iron may be a gift to those who little anticipate its reception, while others may seek for pearls or dig for iron without profitable results. These are accidents which do not, in the slightest degree, militate against the assertion that all value is the result of labour! Nine hundred and ninety-nine out of every one thousand's parts of these annually created are so, and the exceptions are too slight to be deserving of consideration. They are just sufficiently numerous to prove the rule!!"

This paragraph alone is sufficient to prove Carey's want of scientific spirit. What person who had the slightest knowledge of Inductive science, but would smile to hear that exceptions prove the rule! a fact that is totally irreconcileable with a theory is the proof of the theory! This is truly something new in science. In the old world facts are the tests of theories, and though 999 instances may seem to suit a theory, it is universally held that the thousandth, which does not agree with it, disproves it. Now as a matter of fact by far the greater portion of things of value have no labour associated with them at all.

13. McCulloch adopts and enforces Ricardo's extraordinary doctrine that natural agents, the sun, the air, fertilising showers, have no effect on the exchangeable value of the products and fruits of the earth. He says "That commodities could not be produced without the co-operation of the powers of nature, is most certain; and we are very far indeed from seeking to depreciate the obligations we are under to our common mother, or 1 Principles of Political Economy, p. 71. 2 Ibid., B. I., ch. 1.

from endeavouring to exalt the benefits man owes to his own exertions by concealing or underrating those which he enjoys by the bounty of nature. But it is the distinguishing characteristic of the services rendered by the latter that they are gratuitous. They are infinitely useful, and they are at the same time infinitely cheap. They are not like human services, sold for a price; they are merely appropriated. When a fish is caught or a tree is felled, do the nereids or wood nymphs make their appearance, and stipulate that the labour of nature in its production should be paid for before it be carried off and made use of by man? When the miner has dug his way down to the ore, does Plutus hinder its appropriation? Nature is not, as so many would have us suppose, frugal and grudging. Her rude products and her various capacities and powers are all offered freely to man. She neither demands nor receives a return for her favours. Her services are of inestimable utility; but, being granted freely and unconditionally, they are wholly destitute of value, and are consequently without the power of communicating that quality to anything."

Will it be believed that after having enforced in the preceding, as well as in many other passages too numerous to quote, the doctrine that Labour is the sole cause of all Wealth and of all Value, he afterwards says1-" DEMAND may, therefore, be considered as the ultimate source or origin of both exchangeable and real value; for the desire of individuals to possess themselves of articles or rather the demand for them originating in that desire is the sole cause of their being produced or appropriated."

Now in this latter passage, McCulloch is like the cow which, after having given a full pail of milk, kicks it over. The whole of his previous system which he has been enforcing with so much trouble is based on the doctrine that Labour is the source of all Wealth and the cause of all Value. But now he says that DEMAND is the true source of all Value! But this is exactly the doctrine which we have uniformly inculcated throughout―That it is not Labour which is the cause of Value, but Value which is the inducement to Labour; and that it is not the Labour of the Producer which constitutes a thing Wealth, but the Demand of the Consumer.

14. Nothing can be more extravagantly absurd than to say that the products of the earth owe their value exclusively to Principles of Political Economy, p. 315.

labour, and that natural agents, the sun, air, refreshing showers, add nothing to their exchangeable value. Is it human labour which makes corn grow, and fruit ripen? Is it human labour which makes cattle and timber trees grow! Wheat is grown in the North of Scotland at great cost and with great labour, and it is but seldom of the first quality. Wheat is grown in Essex not with more labour or cost, but is usually of far superior quality in consequence of the superior climate; and consequently it sells for a higher price in the market. How is the higher price of Essex wheat due to greater labour? Can any one in his senses fail to perceive that the superior climate greatly affects its value in the the market? If the sun, air, and showers in no way affect value, unripe fruit ought to be of the same value as ripe fruit. All products of the earth are confined to certain climates in which they attain perfection. But the labour and cost of growing them in climates in which they never attain maturity is quite equal to that of growing them in a suitable climate, and, consequently, the immature product ought to be of the same value as the mature product.

If the operations of nature cannot add to the value of the products of the earth, by a parity of reasoning, of course, neither can they take away from their value. Therefore, fruit which has become rotten, fish or meat which has become putrid, beer which has turned sour, timber which has decayed, ought to be of precisely the same value as fruit in its prime, fresh fish or meat, good beer, and sound timber. Tempests and storms of all sorts cannot take away from the value of the crops they destroy, because the labour remains exactly the same. In fact, the absurd consequences of this doctrine are so glaring that any one who reflects upon it for an instant can suggest to himself innumerable cases of its folly.

According to this doctrine of Ricardo and McCulloch, if a man sees a large nugget of gold or a large diamond lying on the ground they have no value; and it is only the labour of picking them up which gives them value! Is it necessary to waste words to refute such folly?

Strictly speaking, of course, neither Labour nor natural agents create Value. For Value resides only in the mind. Both Labour and the agency of nature are in vain, if there be no desire for the products. As there may be numberless products of Labour