Page:Principlesofpoli00malt.djvu/163

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SEC. V.]
MEASURES OF VALUE.
101

tion, the average state of its supply as compared with the demand, or its power of purchasing at these different periods arising from intrinsic causes, will be exactly represented by the quantity of labour which the given quantity of silver will command at each period.

If we now consider the values of commodities in different countries at the same period, and suppose the character of the agricultural labour to be of the same kind, the same conclusion will necessarily follow. Yet here an actual exchange is practicable; and it is quite certain that the products of the same quantities of labour of the same character, will, under different circumstances exchange for very different quantities of money, while we well know that money prices regulate the rate at which all actual exchanges are made.

But in cases of this kind, and they are constantly occuring, it is obvious, that the difference in the money price of the products of the same quantity of labour in different countries, arises from the difference in the value of money, and not from the difference in the value of the labour. Metallic money in all countries which have no mines of the precious metals, is only to be obtained by exportable commodities; and the soil, situation, and habits of some countries may occasion a comparatively scanty production of exports, although their labourers work with as much energy, and sometimes in regard to domestic commodities with as much skill, as the great mass of the labourers of those countries, where exportable commodities abound.

If two nations quite unconnected were to employ the same quantity of labour of the same character in working two silver mines, one of which had double the fertility of the other, there can be no doubt that the supply of silver compared with the demand, or its value in exchange arising from intrinsic causes, would be very much lower in the one country than in the other; and we should not hesitate in saying, that the difference in prices so occasioned, was owing to the difference in the value of money, not in the value of the labour.

Nor ought the conclusion, in my opinion, to be dif-

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