OF LABOUR.

55

capital employed in producing them, and not
by their nominal value, either in coats, hats,
money, or corn. Under the circumstances I
have just supposed, commodities would have
fallen to half their former value, and if money
had not varied, to half their former price also.
If then in this medium, which had not varied
in value, the wages of the labourer should be
found to have fallen, it will not the less be a
real fall, because they might furnish him with
a greater quantity of cheap commodities than
his former wages*.”

In this passage may be noted several of those
errors on which I have already animadverted
in the preceding chapters. In one part he sup-
poses the possibility of an invariable standard
of value amidst universal fluctuation, a suppo-
sition which has been shown to involve contra-
dictory conditions: in another part, he makes
the unmeaning distinction of real and nominal
value, and in another he asserts, that if all
commodities were produced in double quantity

* Principles of Pol. Econ. and Taxation, p. 49, third edit.