NOMINAL VALUE. 39 what advance in argument is effected by telling us, that value estimated in one way is real, but in another nominal? The value of any commodity denoting its relation in exchange to some other commodity, we may speak of it as money-value, corn-value, cloth-value, according to the commodity with which it is compared ; and hence there are a thousand different kinds of value, as many kinds of value as there are commodities in existence, and all are equally real and equally nominal. We gain nothing in perspicuity or precision by the use of these latter terms, but, on the contrary, they entail upon us a heavy incumbrance of vagueness and ambiguity and unproductive discussion. Of the latter we have a good exemplification in the Templars’ Dialogues on Political Econo- my, dialogue the fourth, which contains much ingenious reasoning, founded altogether on this distinction. It would not probably have been written, however, had the author attended to the simple fact, that value must always imply value in something, and unless that something