NOMINAL VALUE. 
15 
have hazarded the preceding observations, 
agree in defining value to be the power 
of an object to purchase or command other ob- 
jects in exchange. Adhering to this defini- 
tion, it is difficult to conceive what propriety 
they could have discerned in their use of the 
words real and nominal. A real power of pur- 
chasing implies, if it means any thing, that it 
is not a false or pretended power; while the 
counter phrase, a nominal power of purchasing, 
intimates that the power is only in name; that 
itis not what it professes to be. But the ap- 
plicability of these epithets can have no de- 
pendence on the nature of the commodities in 
relation to which the power is possessed, nor on 
the causes affecting the production of the com- 
modity in which the power resides. Accord- 
ing to all proper usage, the epithets refer not to 
any thing in the power itself, but to the quality 
of the affirmation that the power exists, charac- 
terizing that affirmation as true or false.