ery
clearly indicates that the author maintained the objective theory,
because if the just price were simply determined by what people were
willing to give, this question could not have arisen.

[Footnote 1: _Irish Theological Quarterly_, vol. x. p. 165.]

Nor is the fact that the just price admitted of a certain elasticity
an argument in favour of its being subjective. Father Kelleher fully
admits that the common estimation was the general criterion of just
price, and, of course, the common estimation could not, of its very
nature, be rigid and immutable. Commodities should, indeed, exchange
according to their objective value, but, even so, commodities could
not carry their value stamped on their faces. Even if we assume that
the standard of exchange was the cost of production, there would still
remain room for a certain amount of difference of opinion as to what
exactly their value would be in particular instances. Suppose that the
commodity offered for sale was a suit of clothes, in estimating its
value on the basis of the cost of production, opinions might differ
as to the precise amount of time required for making it, or as to the
cost of the cloth out of which it was made. Unless recourse was to be
had to an almost interminable process of calculations, nobody could
say authoritatively what precisely the value was, and in practice the
determination of value had perforce to be left to the ordinary human
estimate of what it was, which of its very nature was bound to admit a
certain margin of fluctuation. Thus we can easily understand how, even
with an objective standard of value, the just price might be admitted
to vary within the limits of the maximum as it might be expected to
be estimated by sellers and the minimum as it would appear just to
buyers. The sort of estimation of which St. Thomas speaks is therefore
nothing else than a judgment, which, being human, is liable to be
slightly in excess or defect of the objective value about which it is
formed.'[1] As Father Kelleher puts it on a later page, 'There is a
sense certainly in which, with a solitary exception in the case of
wages, it may be said with perfect truth that the common estimation
determines the just price. That is, the common estimation is the
proximate practical criterion.'[2]

[Footnote 1: _Irish Theological Quarterly_, vol. x. p. 166.]

[Footnote 2: P. 173.]

Father Kelleher uses in support of his contention a very ingenious
argument drawn f