240 NOTES AND ILLUSTRATIONS.

coupled with the term relation, in which case the impro-
priety is still more glaring. It would be difficult for the
greatest ingenuity to find out any way in which the rela-
tion between two commodities can be capable of being ex-
changed. If it were permitted to introduce a new term,
perhaps the epithet exchangive might be useful to mark the
particular kind of relation which we are now obliged to
designate by the phrase * relation in exchange.” The ex-
changive relation of a commodity would be less objection-
able than the exchangeable relation; and if this term were
ndopted, it would supply a deficiency which most writers
on political economy must have occasionally felt.

In the text, I have noticed the improper use of the
terms real and nominal value, in our English economists
only. The celebrated French writer, M. Say, commits
precisely the same error.

¢¢ If different commodities,” says he, *¢ have fallen in
different ratios, some more, others less, it is plain they
must have varied in relative value to each other. That
which has fallen, stockings for instance, has changed its
value relatively to that which has not fallen, as butcher's
meat; and such as have fallen in equal proportion, like
stockings and sugar in our hypothesis, have varied in real,
though not in relative value. — There is this difference be-
tween a real and a relative variation of price; that the for-
mer is a change of value, arising from an alteration of the
charges of production; the latter, a change arising from