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esteems, one on each side, ultimately fixes the market value the price of the articles sold. The feelings of the makers of commodities must, in the long run, be satisfied, else they will not be made; the feelings of purchasers must equally receive satisfaction, or they will not buy. Feeling rules over all values, but it does not measure them; for what is so variable as feeling? It is subject to endless and ever-varying influences. Necessity, want, imaginative ideas on supply and demand, taste, fashion, love of idleness, energy, indifference, speculative ardour, zeal in working, the sense of duty, social ideas, hope and discouragement, and countless other forces sway feeling to and fro, and regulate its strength and its direction. They determine the character and amount of the esteem felt by feeling for a commodity or a service, according to the pervading mood of the hour. Out of this force springs marketvalue, price in money; but it is changeable, even for the same thing, under varying circumstances, and therefore cannot measure. The market value itself of money, of gold, varies like all other values, and is itself dependent on feeling. It might well be that the gold miners all over the world struck for and succeeded in acquiring permanently higher wages; the cost of gold would then be directly affected, and a larger quantity of every other commodity would have to be given for the same price of gold. Feeling would have injured money as an accurate measure. There is no other standard for value but feeling, and feeling is by its nature disqualified for being a standard.

But it is necessary here to guard against a false and misleading inference which might easily be drawn from the

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preceding explanation of the feeling, value. It might be supposed that it meant to describe that feeling as dwelling in the most variable of climates under constant exposure to the most changeable of winds. This is not true of an enormous amount of human conduct governed by feeling in the exchange of wealth. Feeling is essentially variable in nature: that cannot be denied. But, on the other hand, feeling has to deal with powerful material forces, with outward circumstances constantly of the same general nature, with motives generally steady in character, and other more or less stable influences. Habit is a force of great power over human action. Feeling is pretty nigh absent when a man buys a knife or a cigar, beyond the desire to purchase and possess it; so also of his sugar and his tea, his bread and his ordinary clothing. Wages have been known to remain long at the same level in many countries. Fluctuations of de

sire, impulses to change or to resist price, to care about shortening the hours of labour, and similar irregular mental movements are less frequent than the moods of mind generated by long habit. Nevertheless, it always remains true that the feeling value is the foundation of all industrial action, but that foundation is liable to oscillatory disturbances, and sometimes even to earthquakes. What a revolution amongst other feelings does the outburst of a passionate eagerness for war imply. In what different positions does it place men in many markets and towards numberless commodities. The feeling "I value" is always, ultimately, the dictator of all economic action; it asserts its mastery, even when the barbarian sells his children to be slaves.

CHAPTER III.

EXCHANGE.

That

EXCHANGE is the greatest and most universal function of human life. It is a necessity of man's nature. man was born to live in society was the profound utterance of Aristotle. This great fact he regarded as the dominant principle of human conduct, as the foundation of all political and social relations of men with one another. On it he built up political philosophy. Wild animals can live in flocks and herds; but they do not live in society. With trifling exceptions they do not minister to each other's wants. Man, on the contrary, feels wants and desires which irresistibly compel him to seek the aid of his fellow-men. He cannot live in isolation, nor can he satisfy the conditions of his existence by merely living side by side with others, with no other connection with them. He cannot by his single efforts provide for himself those things which his very being forces him to desire and to seek. If men were left to what each of them singly could procure and make, miserable indeed would be their existence. "They must combine," to use the happy phrase of Mr Danson, "and combination means exchange." "Everybody exchanges," says Professor Perry; "for, 'do something for me and I will do something for you,' is the fundamental law of society."

The same thought was very happily expressed by

Prince Albert in an address to "the Society for Improving the Condition of the Labouring Classes."* "God has created man imperfect, and left him with many wants, as it were, to stimulate each to individual exertion, and to make all feel that it is only by united exertions and combined action that these imperfections can be supplied, and these wants satisfied. This presupposes self-reliance and confidence in each other."

But besides this capacity for, and consequent necessity of, living in society, a second peculiarity of human nature exercises enormous power over exchange. Man is distinguished from animals by the faculty of “progressive desire." Man's desires increase in number and range; those of animals do not. Let climate and food remain unchanged, and the buffalo will go down the ages content. He will ever live the same life; he will wish for nothing more. It is radically different with man. In him the gratification of one desire gives birth to another. He perceives some new thing to enjoy, and straightway the desire is kindled to possess it. He is thus prompted to make the effort to acquire it. Thus bread is followed by the desire to have meat; skins have to give way to wool and silk. This progressive desire is the cause of civilisation. New and better things are discovered and wished for in succession. By this force the condition of human life is raised; and it generates the necessary result of bestowing on exchange a magnitude of which it is impossible to assign the limit.

Under the action of these two forces, the social instinct and ever progressive desire, human life becomes one *The "Life of the Prince Consort," by Theodore Martin, Vol. II., P. II.

complicated mass of exchanges. Every one buys, and to buy is to exchange. Every income is, for the most part, applied to procuring things made by others. The wages on which the bulk of mankind live are given in exchange for services, and are in turn spent in obtaining necessaries and conveniences produced by others. A man buys because he can make but very little indeed of what he wants. His brother men are in the same state; so each works for others and others work for him. Thus the various trades and professions spring up into existence. The farmer and the blacksmith, the cotton-spinner and the tailor, the physician and the barrister, the artist and the singer, the merchant and the clergyman, are gradually developed as civilisation progresses; every one exchanging his services for those rendered to him by others. In the earlier stages of society, each man callsin the help of his fellows but for few things; but even at its origin exchange exhibits its most distinguishing peculiarity, that each man receives many services from the combined action of all the workers and exchangers, rendering back generally only one particular service in turn.

As a people advances in culture, this characteristic of exchange is developed to a degree that few think of. There is probably not an inhabitant of England who, however simple may be his fare, his clothing, and his shelter, does not partake of services performed for him by the combined labour of many thousands of persons, so gigantic is the machinery of exchange. There are few English men and women who do not drink tea; before the exchange of English goods for tea is completed, and each has been conveyed by railway and steamboat across the globe to their con

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