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Show I 16 ON THE NATURE AND ( CH. IT. necessarily purchased, no plausible reason can ~e assigned \vhy the quantity of then1 s_hould be 1~ proportion to the difficulty of producing the artJ - cles vvith \vhich they are purchased. . When the Eno·lish and Indian n1uslins appear In the G-ennan n1a~kets, their relative prices \Vill be detcr1nined solely by their relative qualities, \Vithout the slio·htest reference to the very different quantities ~f human labour whi~h they rna?' h~ve cost · and the circun1stance that In the fabncatton of tl1e Indian tnuslins fi \Te or six times n1ore labour bas been en1ployed than in the English, will not enable then1 to con11nand greater returns of n1oney to India. In the ports of Europe no n1erchants are to be found \Vho \vould be disposed to give more money for S \Vedish \Vheat., than Russian, Polish, or Ainerican of the satne quality, tnerely because tnore labour 'had been employed in the cultivation of it, ~n account of its being grown on a more barren soil. If India and Sweden therefore had no other n1eans of buying silver in Europe than by the e~port ~f muslins and corn, it \Vould be absolutely Impossible for them to circulate their con1modities at a money price, con1pared \vith other countries, proportioned to the relative cli~culty \vith vvhi~h they "\\r""ere produced, or the quantity of labour 'vh1ch had been employed upon then1. It is indeed uni~ersally allowed, that the povver of purchasing forei.gn con1modities of all kinds depends upon the relative cheapness, not the relative dearness, of the articles that can be exported ; and therefore, although t~1e actual currency of an individual country, other ctr- SEC. v.J MEASURES 0.1.\" VALUE. 1] 7 cumstances being nearly equal, may be distributed among the different co1nrnoclities bought and sold, accprding to the quantity of labour vvhich they have severally cost, the supposition that the sa1ne sort of distribution vvould take place in different countries, involves a contradiction of the first principles of con11nercial intercourse.* It appears then that no sort of regularity in the production of the precious n1etals, not even if all countries possessed mines of their own, and still less if the great majority 'vere obliged to purchase their money fron1 others, can possibly render the n1oney prices of ~onunoclities a correct measure of the quantity oflabour "vhich has been employed upon them, either in the san1e or different countries, or at the same oi difl-erent periods. Ho\v far the precious metals so circumstanced, may be a good n1easure of the exchangeable value of commodities, though not of the labour which has been employed upon thetn, is quite another ques- , tion. It has been repeatedly stated that the precious n1etals, in ·whatever \Vay they Inay be obtained, are a correct n1easure of exchangeable value at the san1e tin1e and pla~e. And certainly the less subject to variation are the modes of procuring them, the n1ore they vvill approach to a n1easure of exchangeable value at different tin1es and in different places. * 1\tir. Ricardo very justly states that, even on the supposition which he has made respectinO' the precious metals the foreiO'n 0 ' b interchange of commodities is not determined by the quantity of labour which they have re1atively cost. I 3 |
