A Treatise on Political Economy - The Production, Distribution, and Consumption of Wealth

The valuation of an object is nothing more or less than the statement that it holds a certain degree of comparative value with some other specified object; any other object that possesses value may serve as the point of comparison. A house, for instance, may be valued in corn or in money. To say that it is worth 20,000 francs original: "fr." conveys a more accurate notion of its value than to say that it is worth 1,000 hectolitres A hectolitre is a metric unit of volume equal to 100 liters, commonly used for measuring grain. of wheat. This is solely because the habit of calculating the value of all commodities in coin makes it easier for the mind to form an idea of the value of 20,000 francs in other commodities—that is to say, of the quantity of other commodities obtainable for that sum—than of what is obtainable for 1,000 hectolitres of wheat. Yet if wheat is 20 francs per hectolitre, the degree of value expressed by each is the same.

In every act of valuation, the object valued is the fixed point of data original Latin: "datum". In the first instance given, the house is the fixed point: it is a definite amount of materials, put together in a definite manner, upon a—

alterations, our author seems to have been guided principally by the work of David Ricardo, which he has himself translated into French. The significant variation is the admission that the difficulty of attainment is a constituent part, if not the sole regulator, of relative value; in which particular he has followed Ricardo and Adam Smith, their common master. In former editions, utility was laid down as the basis; and so it still seems to be in Book I, with regard to positive value. Neither position is correct, for the reasons given above in the notes, throughout original Latin: "suprà in notis, passim". Perhaps the complete eradication of this error would require the whole work to be remodeled. T. The "T." refers to the translator, C.R. Prinsep.