It is quite clear, therefore, that if the term value is only to be applied in the sense in which it is applied by the author, it would be much better to exclude it at once from the vocabulary of political economy as utterly useless, and only calculated to produce confusion. It may be further observed, that the sense in which the author proposes to apply the term value, is so different from the sense in which it is understood in ordinary conversation, and among the best writers, that it would be quite impossible to maintain it with consistency. The author himself, however obstinately, at times, he seems to persevere in the peculiar meaning which he has given to the term value, frequently uses it by itself, without reference to any particular article in which he proposes to express it. Even in the titles of some of his chapters he does this; and when in Chapter XI. he discusses _the distinction between value and riches_, and in Chapter XI. _the causes of value_, we are entitled to complain, that he has not acted according to the instructions which he has given to others, and told us, either expressly, or by implication, in what article the value here mentioned is to be expressed. Again; when he mentions the value of that corn which is produced on lands paying rent, and when he speaks, as he frequently does, of the value of capital,[61] he does not tell us in what he means to express the value of corn, or of capital, although he thinks that such a reference, either expressed or implied, is always necessary, and particularly says, “In the preceding pages it has been shown, that we can express the value of a commodity only by the quantity of some other commodity for which it will exchange.”[62] The meaning, therefore, which he gives to the term value is such, that he cannot and does not maintain it consistently himself, much less can he expect that others should so maintain it. It appears, then, that the author has arbitrarily adopted a meaning of the term value quite unwarranted by the usage of ordinary conversation, directly opposed to the authority of the best writers on political economy, pre-eminently and conspicuously useless; and of such a nature that it cannot be maintained with consistency. And what does he do with his definition after so adopting it? He applies it to try the truth of a number of propositions advanced by different writers, who, according to his own showing, have used the term in a very different sense. This, I own, appears to me much the same kind of proceeding as if a person were to define a straight line to be something essentially different from a line lying evenly between its two extremes, and then were gravely to apply it to one proposition after another of Euclid, and show, as might easily be done, granting the definition, that the conclusions of the Grecian geometer were all wrong.