with corresponding error all our other conclusions, and anything vague or misty in our conception of it creates confusion and uncertainty in everything else. Happily there is nothing in the laws of value which remains for the present or any future writer to clear up."

But how does Mr Thornton open an article entitled, "Cairnes on Value," in the October, 1876, number of the Contemporary Review:

"Most members of the Political Economy Club must be familiar with an anecdote of Sydney Smith, who not many months after joining the club announced his intention to retire, and on being asked the reason, replied that his chief motive for joining had been to discover what value is, but that all he had discovered was that the rest of the club knew as little about the matter as he did. That his sarcasm, however severe, was probably not unmerited, may be inferred from the haze with which the object of Sydney Smith's curiosity is still surrounded, and from the, at best, but very partial success of the recent attempt made by so powerful a thinker as my lamented friend, the late Professor Cairnes, to pierce the cloudy envelope."

Fortunate would it have been for Political Economy if Mr Mill's happy and confident belief that the meaning of the word value had been discovered once and for ever had been warranted by fact, that the sense of a first-rate expression had been ascertained with the precision of a geometrical truth. But alas the history of economical writing, since the days when Mr Mill had this delightful sensation, records only a series of neverending struggles to catch the ever fugitive meaning of this most baffling of words, till at last Professor Jevons,

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one of the latest wanderers in this trackless region, is forced to exclaim that "he will discontinue the use of the word altogether." Many may feel disposed to think that Political Economy has come to a pretty pass when Professor Perry flings away the word wealth, and Professor Jevons the word value, both unquestionably able and eminent economists, as hopeless. What is the vaunted science to speak about?

It is now desirable to review the principal explanations which have been given of the word value.

Of Adam Smith it may be affirmed that he has not said, in precise terms, what value is. A dictum which. he uttered about it has obtained world-wide celebrity. Every writer feels the duty of drawing the student's attention to it. There is, he affirms, a value in use and a value in exchange. But this formula does not explain what value is. It is often assumed that he declares that there are two kinds of value radically differing in nature, but this interpretation is not necessary to give sense to the expression, and, I am persuaded, misdescribes his meaning. It is troublesome enough to have one word to expound, but to search for two different meanings for the same word would be indeed a hopeless task. What Adam Smith did really affirm is that value is attached to two different objects-to things which are used only, and secondly to things which are exchanged. There are valuable things which are saleable, and there are other valuable things which are not. That is the distinction drawn, and it is perfectly sound. Value is one, but the things it is applied to are two. The dictum may supply us, we hope, with a hint which will give us

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 poundsis 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