| ON REAL AND finition,” he says, “ of real value in exchange, in contradistinction to nominal value in ex- change, is the power of commanding the necessaries and conveniences of life, as dis- tinguished from the power of commanding the precious metals *.” Mr. Ricardo also makes a distinction, in the case of labour, between real and nominal value. “ Wages,” he says, “are to be estimated by their real value, namely, by the quantity of la- bour and capital employed in producing them, and not by their nominal value, either in coats, hats, money, or corn.” After the disquisition on the nature of value in the preceding chapter, the distinction of it in this way, into two kinds, must appear to be merely arbitrary, and incapable of being turned to any use. What information is conveyed, or * Principles of Pol. Econ. p. 62. t Principles of Pol. Econ. and Taxation, p. 50. He does not, however, confine his idea of real value to the case of labour only.— For a more particular examination of the nse which he makes of this term, see the Notes and lilus- trations at the end of the present Treatise, Note A.