OF VALUE.

231

deny the exceptions, but they appear to lose
sight of their existence, and frequently fall into
language incompatible with their admission;
while they altogether overlook the source of
value to be found in partial or incomplete monopolies,
 and the intermixture in production of
commodities which are indebted for their value
to different causes.

On a review of the subject it appears, that
economists attempt too much. They wish to
resolve all the causes of value into one, and

thus reduce the science to a simplicity of which
it will not admit. They overlook the variety of
considerations operating on the mind in the
interchange of commodities. These considerations
 are the causes of value, and the attempt

to proportion the quantities in which commodities
 are exchanged for each other to the
degree in which one of these considerations
exists, must be vain and ineffectual. All in

reality that can be accomplished on this subject
is to ascertain the various causes of value; and
when this is done, we may always infer, from