NOTES AND ILLUSTRATIONS. 237

and worth more cloth. Here then, according to Mr. Ricardo’s
 doctrine, A has fallen to half its former real value,
because worth only half as much gold, which by the supposition
 is invariable in real value. But although we can
tell how much 4 has fallen in real value, we are no nearer
obtaining an expression of real value than we were before.
Still the value of a in gold would be no more its real value,
than the value of 4 in corn or cloth. Hence it is plain,
that real valae, in Mr. Ricardo’s sense, is not value in relation
 to any commodity whatever : consequently it does not
mean power of purchasing, and Mr. Ricardo has used the
word value. when coupled with the epithet real, in an acceptation
 which excludes the whole of his own defiation.

The same remarks will apply to Mr. Malthus’s notion of
absolute value. <* If we could suppose,” says he, * any object
 always to remain of the same value, the comparison of
other commodities with this one would clearly show which
had risen, which had fallen, and which had remained the
same. The value of any commodity, estimated in any measure
 of this kind, might with propriety be called its absolute
or natural value,” &ec. &ec.— The Measure of Value stated
and illustrated, page 2.
To pass over the inconsistency already exposed, of supposing
 a commodity to remain of the same value, and to
take it as implying constancy in the circumstances of its
production, it is evident, that, at an assigned period, the