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

confusion and error. The palpable absurdity of the assertion is no match, strange to say, against the fascination which it exercises on many minds. In currency and banking it produces the greatest disorder. Bank notes, cheques, bills, and similar documents are pieces of paper with writing on them. These writings record debts due, and debts are claims to wealth, and by the magical action of the principle that a claim to wealth is itself wealth, these pieces of paper are converted into real, literal wealth. Why does not every man in every nation take to borrowing of his neighbour upon acknowledgments in writing? The wealth of mankind would be instantly doubled. This doctrine, so indigestible to common sense, is even proclaimed as the unravelling of a mighty secret, as the brilliant illuminator of the benighted region of currency. Mr Macleod has generalised Mr Mill's formula,-not wealth for the nation, but wealth for an individual-into an ultimate principle which explains all paper currency and all banking. "Incorporeal property is wealth!" The man who has taken in that truth knows what bank notes and deposits recorded in banking ledgers are; they are wealth. Mr Macleod borrows the phrase "incorporeal property" from legal writers, and he justifies its use by appeal to the authority of great jurists of the past and the present. The expression is awkward and artificial, but it is not nonsense. It means property without the corpus or substance; it expresses a right to a thing without the actual possession of the corpus or thing itself. Such a right clearly is a property, a valuable possession, capable of being recognised in a Court of Law, and saleable for money. There is no difficulty in

selling a reversion to an estate, or a chattel of which the possession can be obtained only at a deferred date. Such sales occur every day. A twelve months' bill is a piece of incorporeal property, a right to obtain coin, which cannot be got into the owner's hands before the lapse of a year. The words written on the bill are good at law, and will at the proper time, if necessary, be enforced by decree of Court. Such written words are very saleable, because complete reliance is placed on their fulfilment at the specified time. The bill is a title-deed, as is a bank note or a cheque; it is incorporeal property in the sense of the lawyers. But here the lawyers stop; Mr Mill and Mr Macleod go forward. That incorporeal property they call wealth; this the lawyers do not say. The two Economists invent the principle that a claim to wealth is wealth; and the bill fulfils the condition. The piece of paper has a claim for £1000 written upon it; it is actually a thousand pounds. Equally are they bound to preach that spoken words are wealth also, for words can give a claim to a thousand pounds, equally good at law as a written deed. These words, on the principle claimed, must be wealth, must be a thousand pounds. "Beware," remarks Mr Donisthorpe, " of confounding these rights and wealth. A promissory note is merely a promise to pay, and the paper on which such promise is recorded is no more entitled to be called wealth than the sound of an honest man's voice making the same promise. So disappear from the scene, it is hoped for ever, Mr Macleod's second and third species of wealth."

The plain minds of ordinary men are naturally slow to take in the truth of such a wonderful conclusion; so

a resource of great power is brought up to complete the conversion. A metaphor is fetched up from common life. Incorporeal property is wealth, for it represents wealth. Under the cover of this figure of speech the underlying absurdity is concealed. Does not a tradesman in taking account of stock, set down his shop debts as well as his goods, as representing so much money? If the debts are good, are they not the same as money? So in bankruptcy assets are constantly described as representing so much cash. The incorporeal property theorists quote these facts triumphantly, and waive all further discussion. Every science must have terms of its own, and "represent" is the scientific economical What more is needed to prove the doctrine? The puzzled hearer may be inclined to think that he is mystified with a second phrase wonderfully like the dictum that "incorporeal property is wealth." A representative is the thing represented; a counter or ticket which stands for a sovereign is the sovereign itself. The member who represents a county is the county itself. Can we feel surprised that writings on Political Economy are increasing in discredit, that they wield diminished authority over that practical world for whose good alone Political Economy exists?

term.

There is another widely-spread fallacy which has come forth from the same nest. Credit is wealth exclaims a multitude of speakers and writers. Nothing can be more untrue. Wealth is a substance. Even skill, which is justly regarded as wealth, is conceived as embodied in a substance, as a part of a working machine, the man that labours. But credit is not a substance at all. It is an abstract term, denoting a

mode of acting. It is a particular way of acquiring property, nothing more. No one has ever called buying or lending wealth; they are simply different ways of procuring the things termed wealth. Credit is a species of which buying is the genus. Buying is the complete, credit the incomplete transaction. Buying effects the exchange wholly, by giving money for goods. Credit leaves one half undone, takes away the property and gives the equivalent for it, the payment, at a later time. This mode of buying is said to be performed on credit, because it is founded on trust or belief.

But though credit is not wealth, as an abstraction cannot be a substance, the method of purchasing designated by credit is highly instrumental in the production of wealth. Banking is a mode of employing the process of credit, and few inventions, if indeed any, do so much for the increase of wealth as banking. But banking no one calls wealth, though everyone knows that it is a great creator of riches. It places a large part of the capital of the nation in the hands of those who can work it with the greatest efficiency. The result is a mighty augmentation of the wealth made. Banking is a mode of doing business, and no one astonishes his neighbours by calling banking actual wealth. But in respect of credit, the phrase 'credit is wealth' finds favour with many writers precisely on account of the scientific, or rather, the vague sound of the expression. They forget to how many ears it has the sound of jargon, and how sadly it repels men from Political Economy as dealing in language unintelligible to the every-day world.

An interesting question has been raised in respect of