But enough has been said to show that value in use, or utility, is not the quality on which the estimate of the products of national industry must be made. We proceed to notice the suitability for that purpose of the quality of real value in objects, or cost in human agency.

Since the market value of objects of wealth is necessarily subject to continual fluctuations, and cannot, from its nature, afford an invariable standard of valuation, this invariable standard has been sought for from labour; and a given quantity of labour has been said to present a universal and invariable standard, by which every object of wealth may be accurately estimated and compared.

Human labour has been said to be the original purchase-money that is given for every thing. But this expression cannot be admitted as an axiom universally true, and upon which reasonings may be founded. It is true only in a qualified sense; for it is not every thing which man possesses, that has been originally acquired at the expense of his labour. He received the world with all its treasures and its natural powers as a gift from his Creator; and for this he gave neither labour nor any thing else in return. As proprietor of the creation, then, man has other things besides labcur, wherewith to pay the purchase-money of objects; and in the exchanges which take place between different individuals, or the purchase of things by one man of another, portions of this creation and the use of portions of its natural powers are continually given and accepted in payment. But beyond this use and these portions of the creation, in the unimproved state in which they came from the hands of God, man has nothing but labour, either already exerted and embodied in wrought goods in a tangible form, or to be exerted at command, to give. A slight consideration will suffice to convince us, that no standard measure to estimate articles can be found in labour; and that, of all things, it is least entitled to be esteemed as invariable in its value. In some countries labour is habitually far more unremitting and severe than in other countries, while its average productiveness is still more unequal. Labour is of different kinds. There is labour which is esteemed honourable, • Adam Smith

and labour which is considered disreputable. There is hard labour, and easy labour; labour of the nature of pleasant and healthful exercise, and labour of an offensive kind, attended with danger, or destructive of health. How then shall we compare the agency of a person engaged in one occupation, with that of another engaged in an occupation of another character, and state the difference between them in intelligible terms? The time expended describes nothing; since it must be of very unequal worth in different individuals, and in the same individual at different times; consequently yielding different results and entitled to different rates of wages, according to the skill and industry exerted. An hour's labour of one man may, at the same time and place, be worth more than a year's labour of another man. The wages of labour, it is evident, are in a constant state of fluctuation, according as the demand for labour varies from time to time. Labourers are more in request, and their wages, consequently, higher in summer, than in winter. They are very different in different countries. In Bengal, it is said, that a given quantity of silver will command six or eight times more labour than in England. Again, wages are different even in the same country; they are higher in the cities and towns than in the villages and country places: they vary even in parishes adjoining to each other, though no perceptible differ ence exists in the real results of the labour.

In every commodity there is some portion of raw material, which was originally given to man, and not created by labour; and the quantity and value of this material is different in different commodities. Besides, the agency of nature, of many kinds of which man is proprietor, is essential to all production; and the degree or manner in which this agency has been exerted, materially affects the qualities of the product. Again, the result of the agency of nature will most essentially depend on the knowledge of the laws on which it operates that is possessed by the labourer who directs the process, and whose agency is to be estimated. For example, in civilized life, the productive properties of the soil are, by skilful and intelligent husbandmen, directed to the growth of corn, fruits, and vegetables, highly useful and agreeable to man; but amongst savage nations, these

productive properties are either suffered to waste and exhaust themselves in useless and noxious vegetation, or are directed to the growth of what is of much inferior utility. The agency of nature cannot be omitted, and accounted of no value, in the computation of the products of industry, when their qualities so entirely depend upon that agency. Different quantities of labour, too, are required in different instances to put in action the same powers of nature. A poor soil calls for more labour to raise the same quantity of produce than a rich one. If the labour expended is to form the criterion of products, it follows that the corn which is grown on the most fertile soils, and which probably is of the best quality, must be accounted of inferior value to that which is raised on the poor soils at a greater expense of labour, and which in all probability is of inferior quality. Again, when the soil becomes less productive, and more labour must be bestowed to raise produce, it will be said that its real value is increased, when, in fact, the quantity and goodness of the produce is no greater than before. On the other hand, if, in the progress of knowledge, agricultural, manufacturing, and mechanical skill increase, the effectiveness of labour, and the quantity and quality of the products it creates, will be continually increasing, and may be indefinitely augmented, while the quantity of labour expended in their production continuing the same, the estimate of real value can give no intimation that any such change has taken place. How, then, while its products are increasing, and every other fact disproves the position, can so monstrous an assertion be sustained, that labour is of invariable value?

Again, the employment of capital is, in most instances, indispensable to the successful prosecution of the labours of industry; and, in all, its products are augmented and improved by such employment. The quantity of capital then which has been employed, and which otherwise might have found profitable occupation elsewhere, is an essential ingredient in an estimate of cost. The time which has elapsed, during which it might have rendered assistance to industry in other ways, and the advantage of which has been foregone for the sake of the product, cannot therefore be omitted in the computation of cost.

It is plain then, since human agency is not the only thing requisite to the formation of the products of industry, that the quantity of labour expended, if it were itself of uniform value, and could be accurately computed, and definitely stated, can express nothing. Without a statement of the amount of raw material consumed, and the quantity of capital employed, with the time it has been occupied, and unless the agency of nature be taken into account, no expression can be given of the circumstances that have been brought into operation in the formation of the product.

But of what use, it may be asked, would be such an estimate? To exhibit the expenditure which has been made on any article, will give but a very imperfect description of it. It will show none of its qualities; and these qualities are the things necessary to be known. Let its cost be ever so well ascertained, the product after all may be of no use, may exist in excess of quantity beyond the use we have for it, or be ill adapted to our wants. In short, the expenditure it has occasioned can only properly be judged of by its result in the article itself that is yielded, whether that expenditure has been well or ill bestowed; which brings us at last to the estimation of products by their actually subsisting qualities, and not alone by the expenditure incurred in their production or acquisition.

Again, if in the division of the produce of industry between the respective parties contributing to its acquisition-the landlords, capitalists, and labourers-the share of that produce which goes to any one of these be changed, and become either greater or less, the share which remains to labour will be different; and the quantity of the necessaries of life, which a day's labour will command, will be increased or diminished. In the progress of society, the natural results are a higher efficiency of labour, a rise of rents, a diminution of profits, and a larger reward of labour. Yet when products are estimated by their cost in labour, this estimate will indicate no such changes, and the condition of the working classes may be improved to an indefinite extent, without its showing in the slightest degree any such improvement.

In conclusion. Since the qualities of exchangeable value, utility, cost in human agency, which have hitherto been used to

form the estimate of national wealth, and to indicate by their increase or diminution the consequences, whether beneficial or prejudicial, resulting to the community from measures affecting national industry, cannot with certainty indicate these consequences, and therefore cannot be relied on in economical reasonings, we return to the inquiry, by what means these consequences are to be made apparent.

It is not necessary to form an estimate of the whole value, utility, or cost, of all the property or products of the industry of the community in existence, or created in a given time: a work of no small difficulty, and of no small uncertainty as to the accuracy of the result. Excepting value, utility, and cost, there is no quality universally applicable to all these objects or products, and by which an estimate expressed in a single term might be formed. They cannot be estimated by a measure of length, of weight, or of bulk; for they are not all susceptible of admeasurement or comparison in the same way; and some which minister to the faculties of sight, smell, and hearing, are so far immaterial in their nature as not to be capable of admeasurement by material qualities or instruments. Again, the wants and wishes of men, to which they are to minister, and which are affections of mind, must be taken into account, and their extent and intensity looked to; whereas, no material qualities, and, indeed, no qualities whatever strictly belonging to the objects themselves, can express their suitability to the satisfaction of these wants and wishes, or the degree in which they do satisfy them. The end of all exertion is gratification; and the only exact expression of the degree in which exertion succeeds or fails in its intended object is the degree of gratification it procures. This gratification, if it were susceptible of being exhibited in definite terms, would be computed in this way;on one hand, the pleasure arising from the possession of the object which labour has procured; on the other, the pain of its acquisition the difference between these two would exhibit the net pleasure or pain accruing from the exertion of labour, and be the expression of the benefit or loss. Such an expression would be universal, and applicable to every exertion of labour; and, in fact, there is nothing short of this that can serve for