hty pages, entitled, _The Measure of Value, stated and applied_
(published in the spring of the present year). The question proposed
in this work is the same as that already discussed in his Political
Economy--viz. What is the measure of value? But the answer to it is
different: in the Political Economy, the measure of value was
determined to be a mean between corn and labour; in this pamphlet, Mr.
Malthus retracts that opinion, and (finally, let us hope) settles it
to his own satisfaction that the true measure is labour; not the
quantity of labour, observe, which will produce X, but the quantity
which X will command. Upon these two answers, and the delusions which
lie at their root, I shall here forbear to comment; because I am now
chasing Mr. Malthus's _logical_ blunders; and these delusions are not
so much logical as economic: what I now wish the reader to attend
to--is the blunder involved in the question itself; because that
blunder is not economic, but logical. The question is--what is the
measure of value? I say then that the phrase--'measure of value' is an
equivocal phrase; and, in Mr. Malthus's use of it, means indifferently
that which determines value, in relation to the _principium essendi_,
and that which determines value, in relation to the _principium
cognoscendi_. Here, perhaps, the reader will exclaim--'Avoid,
Satanas!' to me, falsely supposing that I have some design upon his
eyes, and wish to blind them with learned dust. But, if he thinks
_that_, he is in the wrong box: I must and will express scholastic
phrases; but, having once done this, I am then ready to descend into
the arena with no other weapons than plain English can furnish. Let us
therefore translate '_measure of value_' into '_that which determines
value_:' and, in this shape, we shall detect the ambiguity of which I
complain. For I say, that the word _determines_ may be taken
subjectively for what determines X in relation to our knowledge, or
objectively for what determines X in relation to itself. Thus, if I
were to ask--'What determined the length of the racecourse?' and the
answer were--'The convenience of the spectators who could not have
seen the horses at a greater distance,' or 'The choice of the
subscribers,' then it is plain that by the word 'determined,' I was
understood to mean 'determined objectively,' _i. e._ in relation to
the existence of the object; in other words, what _caused_ the
racecourse to be this length rather than