NOMINAL VALUE. 15 have hazarded the preceding observations, agree in defining value to be the power of an object to purchase or command other ob- jects in exchange. Adhering to this defini- tion, it is difficult to conceive what propriety they could have discerned in their use of the words real and nominal. A real power of pur- chasing implies, if it means any thing, that it is not a false or pretended power; while the counter phrase, a nominal power of purchasing, intimates that the power is only in name; that itis not what it professes to be. But the ap- plicability of these epithets can have no de- pendence on the nature of the commodities in relation to which the power is possessed, nor on the causes affecting the production of the com- modity in which the power resides. Accord- ing to all proper usage, the epithets refer not to any thing in the power itself, but to the quality of the affirmation that the power exists, charac- terizing that affirmation as true or false.