unique, the antagonism of contending feelings will be purely personal. The market value will be the result of a struggle to discover the strength of the desire to retain possession and of the temptation offered for acquisition. If there be a deficiency in the supply of an indispensable article which must be purchased, the whole supply will be disposed of necessarily. Many will be compelled to reduce their other consumption to escape too severe a sacrifice, and the sellers will be able to establish through the competition of purchasers a raised market value. If, on the contrary, supply is excessive, sellers will be forced to tempt buyers to increased consumption by diminished price. Goods which have ceased to be fashionable will be sold off at very low terms; and fish, at last, may have to be given away.

Then again, the price offered by demand may be unsatisfactory to sellers, and they refuse to sell; thus, beasts are often withheld at a market and driven back home. They never really become supply; by an act of will they are removed from the class of supply. Still more is this the case with wheat, of which a sample only is brought to market; it remains at home; the sample was a mere experiment whether it should pass into supply. There is no intention of taking a lower price than one determined upon beforehand. But these are conditions which are all discovered by actual experiment; they cannot be grouped under any law, for there is no uniform price to govern the feelings of demanders and suppliers and so determine a scientific market value. The ultimate price can be discovered by trial only: in no other way can the strength of the contending feelings be ascertained.

Professor Cairnes could cite other elaborate efforts only as approximative to the law of market price, and he acknowledged that his statement would be utterly unsatisfactory to some economists, whose views in connection with their science were more ambitious than his own. We must come to the same conclusion with Mr Shadwell. We must acknowledge our inability to devise a theory which will satisfactorily account for the phenomena of market value, and must leave them unexplained. We must hold that the fluctuations of the value of commodities cannot be predicted. At the same time I am unable to share Mr Shadwell's confidence that these phenomena conform to law, though we cannot say what it is. The nature of the regulating force, human feeling, in such matters necessarily, as it seems to me, excludes the dominion of law.

It remains to notice some important points connected with supply and demand.

It results from the nature of all trades that all goods on sale are goods offered in exchange for other goods. Every article in every shop or market asks to be exchanged for some other article in some other market. This cardinal fact is disguised by the use of money in exchanging. Money betrayed even so acute a thinker as Mr Mill into the great error of supposing that goods are a demand for money. If that is so, then this demand is little gratified in modern trade. The Clearing House of London alone exchanges goods for goods by the help of pen and paper and figures to an extent enormously greater than all the coin and bank notes in the kingdom. Goods in shops are a demand for other goods. The seller with the money he takes buys other

unique, the antagonism of contending feelings will be purely personal. The market value will be the result of a struggle to discover the strength of the desire to retain possession and of the temptation offered for acquisition. If there be a deficiency in the supply of an indispensable article which must be purchased, the whole supply will be disposed of necessarily. Many will be compelled to reduce their other consumption to escape too severe a sacrifice, and the sellers will be able to establish through the competition of purchasers a raised market value. If, on the contrary, supply is excessive, sellers will be forced to tempt buyers to increased consumption by diminished price. Goods which have ceased to be fashionable will be sold off at very low terms; and fish, at last, may have to be given away.

Then again, the price offered by demand may be unsatisfactory to sellers, and they refuse to sell; thus, beasts are often withheld at a market and driven back home. They never really become supply; by an act of will they are removed from the class of supply. Still more is this the case with wheat, of which a sample only is brought to market; it remains at home; the sample was a mere experiment whether it should pass into supply. There is no intention of taking a lower price than one determined upon beforehand. But these are conditions which are all discovered h experiment; they cannot be grouped un for there is no uniform price to govern demanders and suppliers and so market value. The ultimate by trial only: in no other v

contending feelings be asc

ual

aw,

Professor Caimes could cite other elaborate efforts only as approximative to the law of market price, and he acknowledged that his statement would be utterly unsatisfactory to some economists, whose views in connection with their science were more ambitious than his own. We must come to the same conclusion with Mr Shadwell. We must acknowledge our inability to devise a theory which will satisfactorily account for the phenomena of market value, and must leave them unexplained. We must hold that the fluctuations of the value of commodities cannot be predicted.

At the same time I am unable to share Mr Shadwell's confidence that these phenomena conform to law, though we cannot say what it is. The nature of the regulating force, human feeling, in such matters necessarily, as it seems to me, excludes the dominion of law.

It remains to notice some important points connected with supply and demand.

It results from the nature of all trades that all goods on sale are goods offered in exchange for other goods. Every article in every shop or market asks to be exchanged for some other article in some other market. This cardinal fact is disguised by the use of money in exchanging. Money betrayed even so acute a thinker as Mr Mill into the great error of supposing that goods are a demand for money. If that is so, then this <ified in modern trade. The Clear

mand is litt

one exchanges goods for goods aper and figures to an extent all the coin and bank notes in shops are a demand for other the money he takes buys other

have been stagnant, mills would not have worked at half time, railway traffics and dividends would not have dwindled down, and commercial bills been hard to find in the money market. So simple a truth as this that the trade of a nation is the exchange of all its goods, and depends for magnitude on the quantity of those goods, is the natural and real, but much unthought of explainer of all these collapses.

Allusion has been made above to the difference of the effects produced on the price of luxuries and of necessaries by a deficiency of supply. Dearer luxuries are given up by many, and thus the rise of value encounters great and increasing resistance. But bread must be bought, whatever its price. Buyers on a bad supply become eager; sellers hold back. The result is a rise of price greatly out of proportion with the amount of the deficiency. A very interesting table has been drawn up by Dr Davenant, and cited by Professor Jevons, founded on conclusions drawn by George King in 1696, in which an estimate is given of the effect on price of different amounts of defect in the supply of

corn.

We take it, he remarks, that a defect in the harvest may raise the price of corn in the following propor

so that when corn rises to treble the common rate, it