50

ON THE VALUE

cloth, I should be thought to make use of
strange language. Could any meaning be attached
 to the latter expression, it would be the
labour and capital employed in producing the
cloth itself, and not in producing the silver in
which I expressed the value of the cloth. The
same remarks must equally apply to the use of
the term wages, if it has only one meaning. If I
speak of the labour and capital employed in producing
 wages, it is in this case equivalent
to speaking of the labour and capital employed
in producing labour itself, and not in producing
the silver or any other commodity given for
labour. Mr. Ricardo, however, by this phraseology,
 evidently means the labour and capital
 employed in the production of the money,
or of the commodities in which the value of
labour is expressed —a singular perversion of
terms, arising probably from an unconscious
identification of two distinct ideas; or, if it is
not a perversion of terms, there are evidently
two senses in which the same word is used.
Hence Mr. Ricardo, ingeniously enough,