This complication, however, involves no disastrous perplexity, unless meddled with by powers which bear no relation to it. All commodities will declare their own value, and obtain equivalents, to the ultimate satisfaction of the exchanging parties, if they are left to themselves; but when any power, which cannot regulate human wants and wishes, interferes to prescribe what provision shall be made for those wants and wishes, there is not only a certainty that the relative values of commodities will be temporarily deranged, to the disadvantage of one of the exchanging parties, but an uncertainty when the natural relation of values will be restored, and whether disorder will not first spread into every other department of exchange. Since human labour is the universal commodity which is brought to market, to be given and taken under all forms, (since capital is only hoarded labour,) there is no safety in ticketing any one commodity as containing more labour than it naturally includes, and thus destroying its balance with the rest, to the injury of its seller’s credit, and its buyer’s interest. This is what is done by every government which presumes to interfere with the barter of individuals, or authorizes such interference. The duty of government is precisely the reverse;—to secure the freedom of exchange as carefully as the freedom of labour, in the full assurance that it cannot determine relative values till it can determine the amount of labour and the extent of human wants in every region of the earth. This it may do when it has mastered the chemical and mechanical constitution of the globe, when it may not only gauge the rain in every region, but appoint the proportion of its fall. There are two kinds of Value: value in use, and value in exchange. Articles of the greatest value in use may have none in exchange: as they may be enjoyed without labour; and it is labour which confers exchangeable value. This is not the less true for capital as well as labour being employed in production; for capital is hoarded labour. When equal quantities of any two articles require an equal amount of labour to produce them, they exchange exactly against one another. If one requires more labour than the other, a smaller quantity of the one exchanges against a larger quantity of the other. If it were otherwise, no one would bestow a larger quantity of labour for a less return; and the article requiring the most labour would cease to be produced. Exchangeable value, therefore, naturally depends on cost of production. Naturally, but not universally; for there are influences which cause temporary variations in exchangeable value. These are, whatever circumstances affect demand and supply. But these can act only temporarily; because the demand of any procurable article creates supply; and the factitious value conferred by scarcity soon has an end. When this end has arrived, cost of production again determines exchangeable value.