It is quite astonishing that these consequences should not have startled the author, and made him turn back. If he had but adhered to his first description of value, namely, the esteem in which an object is held; or even if he had interpreted his second definition of value, namely, “the power of purchasing other goods,” according to the ordinary and natural meaning of the expression, he could never have been led into the strange mistake of supposing, that when people have talked of the value of a commodity at one period, compared with the value of the same kind of commodity at another, they could only refer to the rate at which they would actually exchange with each other, which, as no exchange could in such a case take place, would be absurd. What then did they mean? They obviously meant either to compare the esteem in which a commodity was held at one period with the esteem in which it was held at another, founded on the state of its supply compared with the demand, and ordinarily on its costs of production; or to compare the general power of purchasing which a commodity possessed at one period with its general power of purchasing at another period. And will the author venture to assert, that there are not some objects better calculated than others to measure this esteem, or measure this general power of purchasing at different periods? Will the author maintain, that if, in reference to two periods in the same country, a commodity of a given kind will in the second period command double the quantity of labour that it did in the first, we could not with much more certainty infer that the esteem for it had greatly increased, than if we had taken calicoes or currants as the medium of comparison? Or would the author, upon a little reflection, repeat again what he says in the passage last quoted, that from the relations between corn and money in two successive seasons, we can deduce no other relation, * * “money would not be here discharging a particular function any more than the other commodity. We should have the value of corn in money and the value of money in corn, but one would be no more a measure or medium of comparison than the other.”[70] To me, at least, these statements appear utterly unfounded. If the money-price of corn has risen this year to double what it was in the last, I can infer, with almost absolute certainty, that corn is held in much higher estimation than it was. I can be quite sure that the relation of corn to other articles, besides money, has most essentially changed, and that a quarter of corn will now command a much greater quantity of labour, a much greater quantity of cloth, a much greater quantity of hardware, a much greater quantity of hats and shoes, than it did the year before: in short, that it will command nearly double the quantity of all other commodities which are in their natural and ordinary state, and have not been essentially affected by the causes which have operated upon the price of corn.