In the preceding chapter we have described the marvellous effects of Exchange. They are such that men must naturally feel a desire to facilitate it, even at the expense of considerable sacrifices. It is for this end that we have roads, canals, railways, carriages, ships, merchants, tradesmen, bankers; and it is impossible to believe that society would submit to such enormous draughts upon its forces for the purpose of facilitating [p151] exchange, if it did not find in exchange itself an ample compensation. We have also seen that direct ‹barter› could give rise only to transactions at once inconvenient and restrained. It is on that account that men have thought of resolving barter into two factors, ‹sale› and ‹purchase›, by means of an intermediate commodity, readily divisible, and, above all, possessed of ‹value›, in order to secure public confidence. This intermediate commodity is Money. And it is worthy of remark that what, by an ellipsis or metonymy, we designate the value of gold and silver rests on exactly the same foundation as that of the air, the water, the diamond, the sermons of our old missionary, or the roulades of Malibran—that is to say, upon services rendered and received. The gold, indeed, which we find spread on the favoured banks of the Sacramento, derives from nature many precious qualities—ductility, weight, beauty, brilliancy, utility even, if you will. But there is one quality which nature has not given it, because nature has nothing to do with that—‹Value›. A man knows that gold supplies a want which is sensibly felt, and that it is much coveted. He goes to California to seek for gold, just as my neighbour went to the spring to fetch water. He devotes himself to hard work—he digs, he excavates, he washes, he melts down—and then he comes to me and says: I will render you the service of transferring to you this gold; what service will you render me in return? We discuss the matter, we weigh all the circumstances which should influence our determination;—at last we conclude a bargain, and Value is manifested and fixed. Misled by this curt form of expression, “Gold is ‹valuable›,” we might suppose that the value resides in the gold, just as the qualities of ductility and specific gravity reside in it, and that nature has put it there. I hope the reader is already satisfied that this is a mistake. By-and-by he will be convinced that it is a deplorable fallacy.