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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.