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

strange assertion well illustrates the style of treatment which even distinguished writers have not disdained to apply to Political Economy. Did it never occur to him to ask himself whether an autograph of Shakspeare or of Oliver Cromwell found accidentally in a drawer, or a diamond picked up from the ground in Australia, or the skull of an old Briton or of one of Alaric's Huns stumbled upon by chance, or the bone of some rare geological animal discovered in piercing a railway tunnel, had any value or none, even in exchange? We must seek help of some other authority.

Let us appeal to Mr Mill; we shall obtain the definition of whose accuracy he is so confident:-"Value is always value in exchange. Value is a relative term. The value of a thing means the quantity of some other thing, or of things in general, which it exchanges for." This definition has one signal merit: it is perfectly clear, with the exception of that unlucky addition of "things in general." Mr Mill intended, no doubt, to signify by these words the universal purchasing power of money, which can buy anything on sale; but they yield no increase of meaning to the expression value. A valuable thing cannot be exchanged for things in general, but for one or more selected out of them. However, we are now plainly told what value means. The question, What is the value of a ton of pig-iron? has for answer, say, four sovereigns. Four sovereigns and the value of a ton of iron are therefore identical expressions, and vice versa a quarter of a ton of pig-iron and the value of one sovereign are equally identical terms. It must be admitted that there is support, in popular language, for this definition. It is used every day in

ordinary life. The value of that watch is fifty pounds— is a perfectly natural expression, and it must not be discarded in an explanation of value. We must accept it in the sense of market-value, the quantity of money for which a thing can be exchanged-that is, price.

But here Professor Jevons, in his "Theory of Exchange," makes the objection: "If there is any fact certain about value, it is that it means not an object at all, but a quality, attribute, or rather a circumstance of an object." Is this objection well founded? If it is, then Mr Mill has confounded the measure of an article's value with the value itself. "Price measures value," says Professor Jevons, "the measure of a thing is not the thing itself." Now it must be granted, I conceive, that the objection of Professor Jevons is true in spirit, but not in the precise words in which it is stated. Value is something more and other than the thing which an article can command in exchange; value and marketvalue are not identical terms, but that something more comprised in the word value is not a property or attribute of the article itself. Professor Jevons in turn has fallen into a confusion; he confounds the property or quality of an object which creates value with value itself. That property is always utility, and by utility must be understood the power of giving to a man any kind whatever of gratification or satisfaction. Both Mr Mill and Professor Jevons ignore a multitude of expressions in common language which go to the very core of value. Such phrases as, I value this old manuscript, or this unique specimen, or, my dead friend's last letter to me, or, my dead child's plaything, give utterance to something radically distinct in kind from either the quantity of money or

other articles which they could fetch on exchange, or from any property or quality residing in them. The case is identical with that of the expression, I love that child. Love is not a quality, an object in the child, but a feeling in me called out by a quality in the child. That quality is not love, but something which excites love. The feeling is in my mind, the quality giving rise to it in the object. So it is with value. The phrases just mentioned place value in the I, in the person feeling value. The iron and the sovereigns are objects, precisely because the sentiment of value falls upon them. Neither of these eminent writers has touched the point, which is the core of the question for Political Economy-the strength of the feeling, I value. That strength of feeling it is which determines the amount of the commodities which will be required for an exchange or sale. Mr Mill's definition simply records the results which the strength of the feeling value has produced, the result embodied in the quantity of the things which passed in the exchange. He finds a price attached to a thing, an amount of money or other commodities which must be given to acquire it; that he calls its value, but he altogether passes over the fact that this price, this market-value, is the consequence of a judgment formed by the sentiment, the feeling, value.

Professor Jevons* does recognise a property or circumstance which he says "means," but he evidently intended to say, "which confers value, market value, on the object;" but he does not reach the mind of the valuer, and so fails to explain value. Had he gone on to connect this property, this utility of the

object, with its effect on the feelings of him who values, he would have ultimately reached the true meaning of the word value. He discerns the useful quality of the thing valued; but he is conscious that this is not enough to explain the word, or to determine the amount of its price. Accordingly he resents "the inextricable confusion with the notion of utility in the sense of the word value," and ends by giving it up in despair, as a word which he can make nothing of.

But Professor Jevons feels bound to supply a substitute. Exchange cannot be explained without a term which performs some of the services which the expression value rendered. So he adopts in its place ratio of exchange, as a term which is unequivocal; and then adds the explanation :-"When we speak of the ratio of exchange of pig-iron and gold, there can be no possible doubt that we mean merely the quantity of one given for the other." This is precisely Mr Mill's definition of value. What the Professor has done is to expel the word value, to put in its place ratio of exchange, and thus to give ratio the exact meaning with which he was dissatisfied in value. The deficiencies of Mr Mill's explanation apply equally to the expression ratio of exchange, besides its being an expression utterly foreign to the market, the factory, and the retail shop in which Political Economy dwells. The Professor feels these deficiencies, and in his heart longs to come back to value. After a long discussion on the Theory of Exchange, he touchingly exclaims:-"I have pointed out the excessive ambiguity of the word value, and the apparent impossibility of using it safely. When used to express the mere fact of certain articles ex