It is impossible that the science of political economy should not most essentially suffer from such a confusion of terms. Nothing can be clearer, than that, with a view to any thing like precision, and the means of intelligible explanation, it is absolutely necessary to designate by a different name the labour which is directly productive of wealth, from that which merely encourages it. Another most extraordinary and inconceivable misnomer of Mr. Macculloch is, the extension of the term labour to all the operations of nature, and every variety of profits. Adam Smith, and all other writers, who have happened to fall in my way, have meant, by the term labour, when unaccompanied by any specific adjunct, the exertions of human beings; and by the term wages of labour, the remuneration, whether in produce or money, paid to those human beings for their exertions. When Mr. Ricardo stated, that commodities exchanged with each other according to the quantity of labour worked up in them, there cannot be the least doubt that he meant the quantity of human labour immediately employed in their production, together with that portion of human labour worked up in the fixed and circulating capitals consumed in aiding such production. And it is undoubtedly true, referring merely to the relation of one commodity to another, and supposing all other things the same; that is, supposing profits to be the same, the proportion of fixed and circulating capitals to be the same, and the duration of the fixed capitals and the times of the returns of the circulating capitals the same, that then the relative values of the commodities will be determined by the quantity of human labour worked up in each. But Mr. Macculloch could not but see that it was scarcely possible to take up two commodities, of different kinds, in which all these things would be the same, and, consequently, that such a supposition would be so inapplicable to the mass of commodities, as to be perfectly useless; and yet, without such a supposition, the proposition would be obviously false. Instead, however, of correcting Mr. Ricardo’s proposition, as he was naturally called upon to do, by adding to the human labour worked up in the commodity, any other element which was found ordinarily to affect its value, and calling it by its ordinary name, he chose to retain Mr. Ricardo’s language, but entirely to alter its meaning. There is nothing that may not be proved by a new definition. A composition of flour, milk, suet, and stones is a plum-pudding; if by stones be meant plums. Upon this principle, Mr. Macculloch undertakes to show, that commodities do really exchange with each other according to the quantity of labour employed upon them; and it must be acknowledged, that in the instances which he has chosen he has not been deterred by apparent difficulties. He has taken the bull by the horns. The cases are nearly as strong as that of the plum-pudding.[40]