Her revival astonished and alarmed her conquerors. And to what was this splendid restoration due? To the temper and character of the French peasant, to his inveterate love of thrift, to his resolute determination to meet losses by curtailed expenditure and by saving. Is not such a quality of soul as truly an economical force, as real a wealth-making machine as a factory or a fertile soil?

But then, it will be said, we must give up all hope of a scientific definition of wealth. We must; and, as shown above, this is no loss to Political Economy. As Mr Mill confesses, the popular notion of wealth suffices.

CHAPTER II.

VALUE.

I PROPOSE, thus early, to speak of Value. It is a word of the widest range; indeed it may be said to pervade the whole of Political Economy. It is met with everywhere, in the production and distribution of wealth, in wages and profits, in every form of exchange. Its power is felt all through the economical life of mankind. It is a matter of supreme importance to obtain a right understanding of its meaning.

There is one word, marks and circumEconomy, that word

All systematic writers on Political Economy have recognised the great significance of this word, and all, it may be said, have occupied themselves in answering the question, What is value? says Professor Perry, that scribes the field of Political is value. In proportion as an economist is able and eminent does he make vigorous efforts to discover a true and satisfactory answer, but the question has all along been found to be most formidable." "The question is fundamental," remarks Mr Mill. "Almost every speculation respecting the economical interests of a society thus constituted (that is, constituted on the necessity of exchanging products obtained by the labour of another) implies some theory of value. The smallest error on that subject infects

with corresponding error all our other conclusions, and anything vague or misty in our conception of it creates confusion and uncertainty in everything else. Happily there is nothing in the laws of value which remains for the present or any future writer to clear up."

But how does Mr Thornton open an article entitled, "Cairnes on Value," in the October, 1876, number of the Contemporary Review:

"Most members of the Political Economy Club must be familiar with an anecdote of Sydney Smith, who not many months after joining the club announced his intention to retire, and on being asked the reason, replied that his chief motive for joining had been to discover what value is, but that all he had discovered was that the rest of the club knew as little about the matter as he did. That his sarcasm, however severe, was probably not unmerited, may be inferred from the haze with which the object of Sydney Smith's curiosity is still surrounded, and from the, at best, but very partial success of the recent attempt made by so powerful a thinker as my lamented friend, the late Professor Cairnes, to pierce the cloudy envelope."

Fortunate would it have been for Political Economy if Mr Mill's happy and confident belief that the meaning of the word value had been discovered once and for ever had been warranted by fact, that the sense of a first-rate expression had been ascertained with the precision of a geometrical truth. But alas the history of economical writing, since the days when Mr Mill had this delightful sensation, records only a series of neverending struggles to catch the ever fugitive meaning of this most baffling of words, till at last Professor Jevons,

one of the latest wanderers in this trackless region, is forced to exclaim that "he will discontinue the use of the word altogether." Many may feel disposed to think that Political Economy has come to a pretty pass when Professor Perry flings away the word wealth, and Professor Jevons the word value, both unquestionably able and eminent economists, as hopeless. What is the vaunted science to speak about?

It is now desirable to review the principal explanations which have been given of the word value.

Of Adam Smith it may be affirmed that he has not said, in precise terms, what value is. A dictum which he uttered about it has obtained world-wide celebrity. Every writer feels the duty of drawing the student's attention to it. There is, he affirms, a value in use and a value in exchange. But this formula does not explain what value is. It is often assumed that he declares that there are two kinds of value radically differing in nature, but this interpretation is not necessary to give sense to the expression, and, I am persuaded, misdescribes his meaning. It is troublesome enough to have one word to expound, but to search for two different meanings for the same word would be indeed a hopeless task. What Adam Smith did really affirm is that value is attached to two different objects-to things which are used only, and secondly to things which are exchanged. There are valuable things which are saleable, and there are other valuable things which are not. That is the distinction drawn, and it is perfectly sound. Value is one, but the things it is applied to are two. The dictum may supply us, we hope, with a hint which will give us

help to discover this oft-attempted, but as yet unreached North Pole.

Bastiat assures us that exchange gives existence to value. He thus charges Adam Smith with error, for he plainly speaks of a value which exists but which is not connected with exchange. This value Bastiat annihilates. No acuter mind ever applied itself to Political Economy than Bastiat's, but here he ignored the fact that the every-day language of mankind calls many things valuable for which not a single farthing could be had in exchange. Nothing can be more certain than that a definition of value, which either practically stigmatises as senseless the use in ordinary life of so thoroughly natural an expression as valuable attached to an object for which there is no sale, or invents a new sense for it to be specially appropriated to Political Economy, in direct contradiction to popular feeling, amounts to a total failure in solving the problem of its meaning. An economical idea of value which leaves out an ever-recurring sense of the word in common life is little short of an absurdity.

Mr Macculloch lays down, "By value I shall signify exchangeable worth, value in exchange." This definition first explains a word by itself, for value and worth are the same thought under different words; and secondly, by confining himself to value in exchange, he neither explains what value is this value in exchange-and like Bastiat he gives up Adam Smith's and the common world's value in use as having no place in Political Economy. But Mr Macculloch advances yet further. He declares that spontaneous productions have no value, except for the labour of appropriation. This