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.