HKB
in shrimps or in gold picked up by daily labour, on account of the labourer, on the sea-shore? How much more justly then might this accusation be brought against you!
You object to me that I am inconsistent in wishing to leave the consideration of the value of money here and in India out of the question, when speaking of the value of labour and of commodities in this country and in India. I, you say, to leave out the consideration of the value of the precious metals, who have proposed a measure formed of them! There is nothing inconsistent in this. In examining your proposition which rejects my measure and adopts another, I must try it by your doctrines and not by mine which you reject. A conclusion founded on my premises might be a just one, but, if you dispute my premises and substitute others, the conclusion may no longer be the same; and in examining your doctrines I must attend only to the conclusions to which your premises would lead me. You ask: 'Would you really say that cloth and muslin were not dear in India where they cost four or five times as much labour as in England?' You know I would not, because I estimate value by the quantity of labour worked up in a commodity; but by the cost in labour of cloth and muslin in India you do not mean the quantity of labour actually employed on their production, but the quantity which the finished commodity can command in exchange. The difference between us is this; you say a commodity is dear because it will command a great quantity of labour, I say it is only dear when a great quantity has been bestowed on its production. In India a commodity may be produced with twenty days' labour, and may command thirty days' labour. In England it may be produced by twenty-five days' labour and command only twenty-nine. According to you this commodity is dearer in India, according to me it is dearer in England.
Now here is my objection against your measure as a general measure of value, that, notwithstanding more labour may be bestowed on a commodity, it may fall in value estimated in your measure; it may exchange for a less quantity of labour. This is impossible when you apply your measure legitimately to those objects only which it is calculated to measure. Would it be possible, for example, to apply more labour to the production of shrimps or to pick up grains of gold on the sea-shore, and yet to sell those commodities for less labour than before? Certainly not; but it would be quite possible to bestow more labour on the making of a piece of cloth, and yet for cloth to exchange for a less quantity of labour than before. This is another argument in my mind conclusive against the expediency of adopting your measure.
I repeat once more that the same trade precisely would go on between India and Europe, as far as regards commodities, if no such thing as money made of gold and silver existed in the world. All commodities would in that case as well as now command a much larger quantity of labour in India than in England; and, if we wanted to know how much more, either of those commodities, as well as money, would enable us to ascertain. The same thing which makes money of a low value in England makes many other commodities of a low value there; and the political economist in accounting for the low value of one accounts at the same time for the low value of the others. I do not object to accounting for the low value of gold in particular countries; but I say it is not material to an enquiry into a general measure of value, particularly if it be itself objected to as forming any element in that measure.