value; else, instead of buying me only _x_ labor, which is but the double of its former value (_x/2_), it would buy me 5 _x_, or ten times its former value. _Phil_. Your objection, then, to the labor price, as any better expression of the _real_ value than the money price, would be that it is an equivocal expression, leaving it doubtful on which side of the equation the disturbance had taken place, or whether on both sides. In which objection, as against others, you may be right; but you must not urge this against Adam Smith; because, on his theory, the expression is not equivocal; the disturbance can be only on one side of the equation, namely, in your hat. For as to the other side (the labor), _that_ is secured from all disturbance by his doctrine that labor is always of the same value. When, therefore, your hat will purchase _x_ quantity of labor instead of half _x_, the inference is irresistible that your hat has doubled its value. There lies no appeal from this; it cannot be evaded by alleging that the labor may have fallen, for the labor cannot fall. _X_. On the Smithian theory it cannot; and therefore it is that I make a great distinction between the error of Adam Smith and of other later writers. He, though wrong, was consistent. That the value of labor is invariable, is a principle so utterly untenable, that many times Adam Smith abandoned it himself implicitly, though not explicitly. The demonstration of its variable value indeed follows naturally from the laws which govern wages; and, therefore, I will not here anticipate it. Meantime, having once adopted that theory of the unalterable value of labor, Adam Smith was in the right to make it the expression of real value. But this is not done with the same consistency by Mr. Malthus at the very time when he denies the possibility of any invariable value. _Phil_. How so? Mr. Malthus asserts that there is one article of invariable value; what is more, this article is labor,--the very same as that formerly alleged for such by Adam Smith; and he has written a book to prove it.