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 produced
 by a variable or by an invariable quantity
 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 invariable
 measure or standard of value. It appears
to have been to determine the efficiency of revenues,
 salaries, and wages of different classes
of people at different periods, in what condition
 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.