1. There is a veritable multiplicity of explanations of value in the _Wealth of Nations_, which makes a history of Adam Smith’s views on this subject extremely difficult writing. Many a wise or philosophical sort of observation may be correct in a general way, or largely true, and yet not be precisely true. Perhaps the greater part of what Adam Smith has said on the nature of value consists of reflections of this kind, and the student of his text can never be certain that he really planned to describe the laws of value with that precision which modern theory at least hopes to attain. Still there are some exact theorems laid down. The language in which these are expressed is uniformly flowing and makes good reading; but it seems to be more an eloquent appeal against the shallow mercantilist view of wealth, than an attempt at a painstaking analysis of the facts of value. The following thoroughly typical passage from the chapter, “Of the Real and Nominal Price of Commodities, or of their Price in Labor and their Price in Money,” is truly a call to people to look away from money as the sole measure of wealth and regard the real source of wealth. But in spite of this it happens to end in a precise proposition or theory of value: “Wealth, as Mr. Hobbes says, is power. But the person who either acquires, or succeeds to a great fortune, does not necessarily acquire or succeed to any political power, either civil or military.... The power which that possession immediately and directly conveys to him, is the power of purchasing, a certain command over all the labour, or over all the produce of labour which is then in the market. His fortune is greater or less, precisely in proportion to the extent of, his power; or to the quantity either of other men’s labour, or, what is the same thing, of the produce of other men’s labour, which it enables him to purchase or command. The exchangeable value of everything must always be precisely equal to the extent of this power which it conveys to its owner.”[8]