"0 
ON THE NATURE 
If value, however, denotes merely a relation, 
this proposition cannot be true. We may ask, 
to what would this commodity bear an in- 
variable value? What is the correlative? 
Would it bear the same value to all other com- 
modities? It might do so, it is true, but cer- 
tainly not in consequence of being produced 
by an unvarying quantity of labour: for while 
the labour, in this instance, remained a fixed 
quantity, yet if the labour in other commodities 
were increased or diminished, the relations of 
value between this one commodity, and all 
others, would, on Mr. Ricardos own principle, 
be instantly altered. 
If corn, for example, always required pre- 
cisely the same quantity of labour to produce 
it, but all other commodities whatever came to 
be remarked, that notwithstanding the suppression of the 
sentence above cited, he retains another but slightly dif- 
ferent in expression. *¢ That commodity,” says he (chap. 
xx, on Value and Riches), <* is alone invariable, which at 
all times requires the same sacrifice of toil and labour to 
produce it.”