etition, and the stimulus to population, to the new value of the
necessaries on which they were expended. If these improvements extended
to all the objects of the labourer's consumption, we should find him
probably at the end of a very few years, in possession of only a small,
if any, addition to his enjoyments, although the exchangeable value of
those commodities, compared with any other commodity, in the manufacture
of which no such improvement were made, had sustained a very
considerable reduction; and though they were the produce of a very
considerably diminished quantity of labour.

It cannot then be correct, to say with Adam Smith, "that as labour may
sometimes _purchase_ a greater, and sometimes a smaller quantity of
goods, it is their value which varies, not that of the labour which
purchases them;" and therefore, "that labour _alone never varying in
its own value_, is alone the ultimate and real standard by which the
value of all commodities can at all times and places be estimated and
compared;"--but it is correct to say, as Adam Smith had previously said,
"that the proportion between the quantities of labour necessary for
acquiring different objects, seems to be the only circumstance which can
afford any rule for exchanging them for one another;" or in other words,
that it is the comparative quantity of commodities which labour will
produce, that determines their present or past relative value, and not
the comparative quantities of commodities, which are given to the
labourer in exchange for his labour.

If any one commodity could be found, which now and at all times required
precisely the same quantity of labour to produce it, that commodity
would be of an unvarying value, and would be eminently useful as a
standard by which the variations of other things might be measured. Of
such a commodity we have no knowledge, and consequently are unable to
fix on any standard of value. It is, however, of considerable use
towards attaining a correct theory, to ascertain what the essential
qualities of a standard are, that we may know the causes of the
variation in the relative value of commodities, and that we may be
enabled to calculate the degree in which they are likely to operate.

* * * * *

In speaking however of labour, as being the foundation of all value, and
the relative quantity of labour as determining the relative value of
commodities, I must not be supposed to be inattenti