NOMINAL VALUE.

15

have hazarded the preceding observations,
agree in defining value to be the power
of an object to purchase or command other objects
 in exchange. Adhering to this definition,
 it is difficult to conceive what propriety
they could have discerned in their use of the
words real and nominal. A real power of purchasing
 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 applicability
 of these epithets can have no dependence
 on the nature of the commodities in
relation to which the power is possessed, nor on
the causes affecting the production of the commodity
 in which the power resides. According
 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, characterizing
 that affirmation as true or false.