else, is the toil and trouble which it can save
to himself, and which it can impose upon
other people. What is bought with money,
or with goods, is purchased by labour, as much
as what we acquire by the toil of our own
body. That money, or those goods, indeed,
save us this toil. They contain the value of
a certain quantity of labour, which we exchange
for what is supposed at the time to
contain the value of an equal quantity. Labour
was the first price, the original purchase-money
that was paid for all things. It was
not by gold or by silver, but by labour, that
all the wealth of the world was originally purchased;
and its value, to those who possess it,
and who want to exchange it for some new
productions, is precisely equal to the quantity
of labour which it can enable them to purchase
or command.
Wealth, as Mr Hobbes says, is power. But
the person who either acquires, or succeeds to
a great fortune, does not necessarily acquire
or succeed to any political power, either civil
or military. His fortune may, perhaps, afford
him the means of acquiring both; but the
mere possession of that fortune does not necessarily
convey to him either. The power
which that possession immediately and directly
conveys to him, is the power of purchasing
a certain command over all the labour, or over
all the produce of labour which is then in the
market. His fortune is greater or less, precisely
in proportion to the extent of this power,
or to the quantity either of other men's labour,
or, what is the same thing, of the produce of
other men's labour, which it enables him to
purchase or command. The exchangeable value
of every thing must always be precisely
equal to the extent of this power which it conveys
to its owner.
But though labour be the real measure of
the exchangeable value of all commodities, it
is not that by which their value is commonly
estimated. It is often difficult to ascertain
the proportion between two different quantities
of labour. The time spent in two different
sorts of work will not always alone determine
this proportion. The different degrees of hardship
endured, and of ingenuity exercised, must
likewise be taken into account. There may
be more labour in an hour's hard work, than
in two hours easy business; or in an hour's
application to a trade which it cost ten years
labour to learn, than in a month's industry, at
an ordinary and obvious employment. But
it is not easy to find any accurate measure
either of hardship or ingenuity. In exchanging,
indeed, the different productions of different
sorts of labour for one another, some
allowance is commonly made for both. It is
adjusted, however, not by any accurate measure,
but by the higgling and bargaining of the
market, according to that sort of rough equality
which, though not exact, is sufficient for
carrying on the business of common life.
Every commodity, besides, is more frequently
exchanged for, and thereby compared with,
other commodities, than with labour. It is
more natural, therefore, to estimate its exchangeable
value by the quantity of some other
commodity, than by that of the labour which
it can produce. The greater part of people,
too, understand better what is meant by a
quantity of a particular commodity, than by a
quantity of labour. The one is a plain palpable
object; the other an abstract notion, which,
though it can be made sufficiently intelligible,
is not altogether so natural and obvious.
But when barter ceases, and money has become
the common instrument of commerce,
every particular commodity is more frequently
exchanged for money than for any other commodity.
The butcher seldom carries his beef
or his mutton to the baker or the brewer, in
order to exchange them for bread or for beer;
but he carries them to the market, where he
exchanges them for money, and afterwards exchanges
that money for bread and for beer.
The quantity of money which he gets for them
regulates, too, the quantity of bread and beer
which he can afterwards purchase. It is more
natural and obvious to him, therefore, to estimate
their value by the quantity of money,
the commodity for which he immediately exchanges
them, than by that of bread and beer,
the commodities for which he can exchange
them only by the intervention of another commodity;
and rather to say that his butcher's
meat is worth threepence or fourpence a-pound,
than that it is worth three or four pounds of
bread, or three or four quarts of small beer.
Hence it comes to pass, that the exchangeable
value of every commodity is more frequently
estimated by the quantity of money, than by
the quantity either of labour or of any other
commodity which can be had in exchange for
it.
Gold and silver, however, like every other
commodity, vary in their value; are sometimes
cheaper and sometimes dearer, sometimes of
easier and sometimes of more difficult purchase.
The quantity of labour which any particular
quantity of them can purchase or command,
or the quantity of other goods which it
will exchange for, depends always upon the
fertility or barrenness of the mines which happen
to be known about the time when such
exchanges are made. The discovery of the
abundant mines of America, reduced, in the
sixteenth century, the value of gold and silver
in Europe to about a third of what it had
been before. As it cost less labour to bring
those metals from the mine to the market, so,
when they were brought thither, they could
purchase or command less labour; and this
revolution in their value, though perhaps the
greatest, is by no means the only one of which
history gives some account. But as a measure
of quantity, such as the natural foot, fathom,
or handful, which is continually varying