i,

ON REAL AND

if tried by the principle laid down in our last
chapter, “ that a rise in the value of a commodity
 means, that an equal quantity of it exchanges
 for a greater quantity than before, of
the commodity in relation to which it is said to
rise.” To maintain, therefore, that A increases
in value to B, and at the same time that it commands
 a smaller quantity of B, is to affirm a
rise and fall in a at the same moment.
In the second sense the proposition, as I have
already remarked, is too self-evident to require
any proof; and as the author of the Dialogues
has expended so much labour and dialectical
skill in explaining and supporting it, we might
fairly infer that this is not the sense in which
he meant it to be interpreted, even if he had
not put the matter beyond dispute by his doctrine,
 so frequently and strongly expressed,
“ that there is no necessary connection at all, or
of any kind, between the quantity commanded
and the value commanding *.”
The eminent writers on whose doctrines I

« Ibid., p. 552.