h were embodied in the same
writer's work on Moral Theology, was controverted in a series of
articles by Father Kelleher in the _Irish Theological Quarterly_.[3]

[Footnote 1: Pp. 77-9.]

[Footnote 2: Vol. iv. p. 146.]

[Footnote 1: 'Market Prices,' vol. ix. p. 398 and vol. x. p. 163; and
'Father Slater on Just Price and Value,' vol. xi. p. 159.]

Father Slater draws attention to the fact that Dr. Cunningham
overlooked to some extent the importance of common estimation in
arriving at the just price. He points out that, far from objects being
invested with some immutable objective value, their value was in fact
determined by the price which the community as a whole was willing to
pay for them: 'As the value in exchange will be determined by what the
members of the community at the time are prepared to give, ... it will
be determined by the social estimation of its utility for the support
of life and its scarcity. It will depend upon its capacity to satisfy
the wants and desires of the people with whom commercial transactions
are possible and practicable. Father Slater then goes on categorically
to refute Dr. Cunningham's presentation of the objectivity of price:
'All that that doctrine asserts is that there should be, and that
there is, an equivalent in social value between the commodity and
its price at a certain time and in a certain place; it says nothing
whatever about the stability or permanence of prices at different
times and at different places. By maintaining that the just price did
not depend upon the valuation of the individual buyer or seller the
mediaeval doctors did not dream of making it intrinsic to the object.'
In the work on Moral Theology, to which we have referred, expressions
occur which lead one to believe that Father Slater did not see any
great difference between the mediaeval just price arrived at by common
estimation and the modern normal or market price arrived at by
open competition. Thus, in endeavouring to correct Dr. Cunningham's
misunderstanding, Father Slater seems to have gone too far in the
other direction, and his position has been ably and, in our judgment,
successfully, controverted by Father Kelleher.

The point at issue between the upholders of the two opposing views
on just price is well stated by Father Kelleher in the first of his
articles on the subject: 'We must try to find out whether the just
and fair price determined the rate of exchange, or whether the rate
of exchan