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 "Theory of Political Economy."

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 the 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

changing in a particular ratio, I have proposed to substitute the unequivocal expression ratio of exchange. But I am inclined to believe that a ratio is not the meaning which most persons attach to the word value. There is a certain sense of esteem, of desirableness, which we may have with regard to a thing apart from any distinct consciousness of the ratio in which it would exchange for other things." It is to be regretted that he did not follow out the clue contained in this thought; he would then have found his way out of the labyrinth.

Professor Jevons calls the expression, ratio of exchange, unequivocal. As applied to value, nothing can be less so. Ratio simply means proportion. Ratio is a mathematical expression, and nothing else. Twice, threequarters, of the size, or number, and so on. But before a ratio can be stated, the things compared must be brought to a common denominator. Gold and pig-iron are not halves or quarters of each other in exchange.

By value Mr Mill and Professor Jevons mean price. Mr Mill feels the danger of losing his word value by its being merged into price and tries hard to save it. "The early Political Economists," he tells us, "treated price and value as synonymous, but this was a wasteful expenditure of two good scientific words on a single idea." So he comes to the rescue with a subtle distinction. "By the price of a thing he will understand its value in money; by the value or exchange value of a thing, the command which it gives over purchaseable commodities in general,❞—but this is manifestly a distinction without a difference, a pure tautology. This very command is the one thing which money possesses. Money commands all "purchaseable commodities."

Professor Cairnes walks in the same path as Professor Jevons. He defines value as proportion or ratio in exchange of commodities. By this definition he must mean one of two things. Either value is the quantity of other things which an article can command-that is price or a mathematical relation. It is unnecessary

after what precedes to say more about either of them.

Professor Perry of Williams College, Massachusetts,* an economist of great ability, defines value as the relation of mutual purchase established between two services by their exchange. This is ratio of exchange, but then he has his common denominator. All articles are reduced to services. "The value of a thing," he adds, "is its purchasing power expressed in any other purchasing power whatever." This is a repetition of almost the very words of Mr Mill. Value, for the possessor, is the quantity of other services or things which a service or thing can command, which can be got by means of it.

Mr Shadwell, a writer of much learning and ability, defines value to be, "the esteem in which commodities are held, as measured by the quantity of labour which will be given in exchange for them." The word esteem gave promise of a new and, as I hold, right conception of value; indeed, the words, "the esteem in which commodities are held," are the true explanation of value. But, like Professor Jevons, Mr Shadwell does not seem to have followed out the thought contained in esteem. Immediately after the definition, he thus proceeds: "To explain why a given commodity has a given value is to answer the question, Why does its

* "Elements of Political Economy."

+ "A System of Political Economy," by John Lancelot Shadwell.

possession enable its owner to command the labour of others so many days? or which is the same thing, Why is it necessary for the labourer to spend so many days in order to procure the commodity in question? Thus value and wages are the same phenomenon seen from two different points of view, and the answer which naturally suggests itself to both questions is, Because it has required just so many days' labour to produce the commodity." It is evident that the idea of esteem has here disappeared. In its place we have "so many days' labour;" or, we may suppose, such an amount of wages. Thus in reality we are brought to Mr Mill's definition, to market value, to command over a given quantity of commodities in exchange. Only for commodities days' labour is substituted, as being the regulator of the quantity of commodities given in exchange for the thing possessing value. Feeling has no place in this definition of value. The command of a day's work is made to be value.

It is unnecessary to say more to show the want of success which has attended the many attempts to answer that very natural, but very unmanageable question, What is value? The review of the diverse opinions expressed almost seems to justify the remark of one who himself embarked on this sea of troubles in an unpublished and extremely intelligent essay on value, the late Colonel Macdonald. "It cannot be denied that no science was ever buried under such a mass of unintelligible pages and hidden from the light of common sense by words without knowledge than the science of Political Economy; and yet ignorance and error here must be followed by evils more fatal to the comfort and