This proposition is true in the case of individuals, as well as of classes and of whole nations.(683) It is plain, that under a system of fixed prices we can more certainly discover what the equitable price is, than in the heat of higgling which besides consumes a great deal of precious time. Lastly, one of the principal requisites of a well developed scale of prices is national honor, and this, doubtless, increases in the higher stages of civilization, not only because of the greater moral culture which then prevails, but also and especially because that which constitutes a people’s real and best interests is better understood.(684) Among declining nations, many of these developments take a retrogressive road. The very great distinction between rich and poor, between educated and uneducated, again produces great fluctuations in price. A proletarian people who have sunk so low as to live on potatoes will suffer much more from variations in price and of the means of subsistence than a people who live on wheat; for the reason that it is so difficult to export or to preserve(685) potatoes. Nor can it be doubted, that the greatest possible constancy of prices is the most beneficial condition that the general economy of a people can be in. Where prices change while the cost of production remains the same, one person can only gain what the other has lost. But such unmerited gains and undeserved losses have an invariable tendency to destroy the deepest roots of a people’s economic activity; and intentional speculation based upon such change usually assumes an immoral character. (Stock-jobbing.)(686) Even if Macleod be right, that an increase or decrease in prices is to be regarded as a warning of excess, the former of excess of consumption, the latter of production, no one will doubt that it is the interest of every organism to confine pain within the smallest possible limits, even if its consequences are so beneficial to the preservation of the whole body. Chapter III. Money In General. Section CXVI. Instrument Of Exchange. Measure Of Value. Barter.