250 NOTES AND ILLUSTRATIONS.

variableness of cost, or invariableness in the circumstances
of production; and what would be measured by it would
be that cost, or those circumstances, and not value.

NOTE E (page 133).

The reasoning in the text shows, that on the supposition
that commeditities were to each other in value as the quantities
 of labour required to produce them, any commodity
produced by labour alone, however variable the quantity of
that labour, would enable us to ascertain all that Mr. Ricardo
 regards as to be derived exclusively from a commodity
 produced by an invariable quantity of labour; provided
 a register were kept of the varying quantities of the
producing labour required. In both cases, the prices of
the standard (if we may so call it) at different periods,
would be equally necessary. In the one case, the circumstance
 of invariableness in the labour expended would
save the trouble of keeping such a register, and simplify
our calculations ; but in the other case, the result would be
attained, if not with equal ease, at least with equal certainty.


NOTE F (page 150).

The author of the Templars’ Dialogues has also examined
 this table, but it appears to me that he has fallen