Its doing so may, therefore, stand as a general rule. Though labour, immediate and hoarded, is the _regulator_, it is not the _measure_ of exchangeable value; for the sufficient reason, that labour itself is perpetually varying in quality and quantity, from there being no fixed proportion between immediate and hoarded labour. Since labour, the primary regulator, cannot serve as a measure of exchangeable value, none of the products of labour can serve as such a measure. There is, therefore, no measure of exchangeable value. Such a measure is not needed; as a due regulation of the supply of labour, and the allowance of free scope to the principle of competition ensure sufficient stability of exchangeable value for all practical purposes. In these requisites are included security of property, and freedom of exchange, to which political tranquillity and legislative impartiality are essential. Price is the exponent of exchangeable value. Natural or necessary price,—regulated by cost of production,— includes the wages of the labourer, and the profits of the capitalist. Market price varies from natural price with variations of demand and supply, and in proportion to the oppressiveness of public burdens and commercial restrictions. The more nearly and permanently market prices approach natural prices, the more prosperous is the state of commerce; and the two most essential requisites to this prosperity are social tranquillity and legislative impartiality. The ancient error, that some mysterious quality inherent in gold and silver money constituted it wealth, almost to the exclusion of every other commodity, is now so universally dismissed by all who know anything of our science, that there is no occasion to controvert it further than by presenting the appropriate Summary of Principles; and the kindred modern error, that an enlargement of its quantity can do more than give a temporary, and probably hurtful, stimulus to industry, requires now no more than a similar exposure. The sense of the country has lately been taken on this question; and the result proves that there is prevalent a sufficient knowledge of the philosophy and fact of the case to encourage a hope that no such hazardous sport with the circulating medium as the country has previously suffered from will be again attempted. The fate of the Berkeley[G] family, in consequence of actions on the currency, is only one instance from one class. A long series of sad stories might be told of sufferers of every rank, whose partial prosperity, enjoyed at the expense of one another’s ruin, was soon swallowed up in the destruction which universally attends a shock to public credit. The injured might be found dispersed through every dwelling in the land; and, however loudly the richer might complain of the magnitude of their losses, the most cruelly injured were those who had the least opportunity of accounting for their gains and their