OF VALUE.

133

varied every year in a given proportion, we
should be equally spared the pains of historical
research, To have a commodity, whether pro-
duced by a variable or by an invariable quan-
tity of labour, which saved us the trouble of
inquiry, would doubtless be an advantage, but
we might as well suppose fifty other arbitrary
atds *.
In concluding this discussion, it may not be
useless to advert more particularly to one of the
objects, which economists have proposed to
themselves in the attempt to discover an inva-
riable measure or standard of value. It appears
to have been to determine the efficiency of re-
venues, salaries, and wages of different classes
of people at different periods, in what condi-
tion such revenues enabled them to live, or
what power it enabled them to wield. This, it
is supposed, would be accomplished, did we
possess some object of immutable value.

“ If we are told,” says Mr. Malthus, “that
the wages of day-labour in a particular coun-

See Note E.