development of his faculties, instead of bringing him nearer to it.

Commodities consumed by these false wants are false wealth. They are rightly called wealth, for they are bought and sold for large sums. But they are false wealth, for they are of no real good or use. Often they are worse than useless-they are injurious; worse than this, they are fatal.

Alcoholic liquors are condemned by hygiene They are fatal to health, produce drunkenness and all the vices which accompany it, degrade the man who abuses their use, and plunge him in the mire. Yet every year in France their cost amounts to about 16,000,000l.; in England to 20,000,000l.; in Belgium to 3,200,000l.; and in Holland to quite as much. In Russia the tax on such liquors brings the State 200,000,000 roubles, or 32,000,000l.-about onethird of the imperial revenue.

According to calculations made in the United States, in ten years alcohol imposed on the country a direct expenditure of about 300,000,000., and an indirect expenditure of a similar sum. It has sent 100,000 orphans to the asylums, it has brought 138,000 persons to the prison or the workhouse, it has led to 10,000 suicides, and has made 200,000 widows and 1,000,000 orphans. The total expenditure for civilised countries can hardly be less than 250,000,0007. Opium, which brings those who smoke it to idiocy, annually costs China at least 16,000,0007.

The inexplicable habit, borrowed from the savages,

of burning a leaf of tobacco between the lips, in order to absorb a certain dose of a highly noxious narcotic poison, costs France every year 14,400,000l.; Italy, 5,520,000l.; Belgium, 1,200,000l.; and civilised countries generally more than 120,000,000l. — a moderate price for the 600,000 tons of tobacco which, according to the Austrian statistician, von Neumann-Spallart, are annually consumed. The highest part of the human race accordingly spends some 400,000,000l. to poison itself in large or small doses.

Women also pay thousands of pounds for precious stones, which have no other effect than to foster two serious vices-vanity in those who wear them, and envy in those foolish enough to wish to have them.

Throw into the sea the alcohol and opium, the tobacco and precious stones, and nothing will be lost. On the contrary, those who were poisoning themselves and corrupting their minds and bodies will gain much in moral and physical well-being. Things whose destruction improves the condition of mankind cannot be true wealth. If all the money and all the hours of labour which this money remunerates, instead of being devoted, as they now are, to producing hurtful commodities, were devoted to manufacturing useful ones, how the comfort in the world would increase and the destitution diminish!

CHAPTER IV.

§ 1. Value.

THE value of things is in proportion to their utility, for wealth only merits this name in so far as it corresponds to a want, and thus is useful. Real value, then, does not depend on estimation, but on the property possessed by the articles answering to our rational wants. Nevertheless, there will also be a value depending on estimation, i.e. on the opinion of those who desire an object; and this opinion may give a value to things which do not naturally possess any.

Value is a relation between the physical properties of things on the one hand, and men's needs on the other, and this relation is modified by any change in the needs, even when the qualities of commodities remain the same. Thus fur has a value in the north, because it is needed as a defence against the cold. Beneath the equator it is valueless, because this need no longer exists. Medicines, again, have no value for the healthy man, any more than food has for the sick man unable to swallow it.

The value of things is not, as has been maintained, determined by the labour employed in their production, since there are many things of the same value which have nevertheless cost very unequal amounts

of labour; a quarter of wheat, for instance, reaped from a fertile soil, and another quarter reaped from a poor one. Again, there are other things which have required similar amounts of labour and yet are of very different values, as the vintages of choice growths and ordinary wines. Lastly, the value of things changes daily, although it is impossible that any change should have taken place in the amount of labour embodied in them; thus a quarter of corn may be worth much more, or much less, this month than it was last.

Value, again, is not determined by exchange. If I am to exchange my horse for an ox, I must first form an idea of the respective values of the two beasts, and then compare them. Thus the idea of value precedes and determines exchange. An exchange, when made, is constantly criticised in the light of ideas of value, as in the remark, A has sold his house, field, horse, &c., for much above, or below, its value.

The real basis of a thing's value is its utility, i.e. the uses to which it can be put, or the wants which it supplies; it is because bread satisfies my hunger that it has a value in my eyes. The greater this power of satisfying a rational want, the greater an object's value. An ox is thus worth ten times as much as a sheep, as giving ten times as much nourishment.

It must, however, be added that the value of a commodity increases in proportion to its scarceness,

and decreases with its abundance, and this for obvious reasons. The scarcer the commodity, the more difficult will it be to replace, and the more advantageous to possess. On the other hand, the greater its abundance, the less profit will it bring its owner. A loaf is thus of greater utility than a hat, but of less value, because, as a rule, more easily replaceable. If, however, bread became scarce and to replace the stock of it a matter of great difficulty, as in time of siege, no one would give a loaf to obtain ten hats. Value is thus determined by the object's utility, combined with the greater or less difficulty of replacing it.

To prove that it is inaccurate to maintain that value depends on utility, it has been pointed out that while water, which is supremely useful, possesses no value, a diamond is of great value and of almost no use. This objection is founded on the vicious method of argument which employs the same word to express two different ideas. In saying that water is supremely useful we speak of water as an element, that is to say, of the whole procurable volume of it, and in this sense water is truly supremely useful; but in this sense it is also of supreme value, inasmuch as any one, if deprived of it, would give all he possessed to obtain it. On the other hand, in speaking of water as of small utility, we are speaking of a fixed quantity of water, such as a gallon or pint, and in this case water, it is true, has very little value; but it is also true that such a quantity of water is of very