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THE  SOCIALISM  OF  TO-DAY.

more  commodities  into  the  market,  the  price  of  these  commodities ­
  will  fall,  consumers  will  profit  thereby,  and  rent  will
not  rise.  Mill,  indeed,  believes  that  in  such  a  case  rent  would
be  lowered.  Ricardo  was  perfectly  right  in  maintaining  that
the  cause  of  the  rise  of  rent  is  the  increase  of  population,
which,  by  requiring  more  food,  brings  about  a  rise  in  its  price.
On  the  other  hand,  when  there  is  no  want  of  land,  as  is  the
case  in  new  countries,  rent  is  almost  nil,  however  productive
labour  may  be.  The  reason  of  this  is  evident;  the  farmer
will  not  consent  to  pay  a  high  price  for  the  enjoyment  of  a
farm  which  he  can  get  almost  for  nothing  elsewhere.  What
remains  true  in  the  statement  of  Rodbertus  is  that  every
invention,  every  process  which  lessens  the  cost  of  production,
permits  of  an  increase  of  rent.  This  is  a  very  important  point,
which  has  not  been  clearly  perceived,  and  which  escaped  even
Ricardo  and  Mill.
The  capital  mistake  of  Rodbertus,  borrowed  from  him  by
the  other  German  Socialists,  is  that  he  makes  labour  the  sole
source  of  value.  He  concludes  from  it  that  all  commodities
ought  to  be  exchanged  on  the  footing  of  the  amount  of  manual
labour  each  of  them  has  exacted,  and  on  this  basis  he  has
sketched  the  project  of  a  Loan  Institution,  which  closely
resembles  Proudhon’s  Bank  of  Exchange.  The  workman
deposits  a  commodity  at  the  central  depot  ;  this  commodity
is  valued  according  to  the  number  of  hours  of  labour  normally
and  on  the  average  necessary  to  produce  it.  This  is  its  natural
price.  He  receives  in  payment  a  credit-note  representing  these
hours  of  labour,  and  with  this  credit-note  he  can  buy  in  the
common  emporium  any  other  commodity  the  price  of  which  is
fixed  in  the  same  way.  This,  as  may  be  seen,  is  putting  into
practice  the  idea  of  Adam  Smith,  that  labour,  and  not  coin,
is  the  best  common  measure  of  values.  In  the  multitude  of
exchanges  which  take  place,  hours  of  labour  would,always  be
bartered  against  hours  of  labour,  or,  as  Bastiat  expresses  it,
services  against  services.  The  well-being  of  each  person
would  be  proportioned  to  the  part  he  had  taken  in  the
national  production,  without  any  deduction  to  the  profit  of
anybody.  The  power  of  buying  would  be  in  proportion  to