Section VIII. Valuation Of Resources. It has often been made a question, whether the valuation of resources should be based on the value in use, or the value in exchange of their constituent parts.(92) The latter has, of course, no interest, except in so far as we are concerned with the possibility of obtaining the control of part of the resources, or means, of another, by the surrender of a part of one’s own goods. In estimating the value of private resources, which require to be made continually an object of trade, this point is, of course, of the greatest importance. If certain of their component elements, lands, for instance, belonging to a _fidei commissum_, are incapable of entering immediately into the market, at least the revenue they yield is measured by its value in exchange. It is quite otherwise, even with the resources of a whole nation. Such resources are, evidently, much more independent, and have much less need of being exchanged against their equals, than private resources. The foreign commerce, of the greatest and most advanced nations, has, hitherto, been but a small quota of their internal commerce.(93) A valuation, therefore, based on value in exchange, however interesting it might be to enable us to determine how property is shared by the different classes and persons that compose the nation, would afford but little information concerning the absolute amount of the national wealth. This, of course, applies in a much higher degree to the resources of the whole world.