34
THE NATURE AND CAUSES OF
In order to investigate the principles which regulate theexchangeable value of commodities, I shall endeavour toshew,
First, what is the real measure of this exchangeable value;^or, wherein consists the real price of all commodities.
Secondly, what are the different parts of which this real< price is composed or made up.
And, lastly, what are the different circumstances whichsometimes raise some or all of these different parts of priceabove, and sometimes sink them below, their natural or ordi-nary rate; or, what are the causes which sometimes hinder themarket price, that is, the actual price of commodities, fromcoinciding exactly with what may be called their naturalprice.
I shall endeavour to explain, as fully and distinctly as Ican, those three subjects in the three following chapters, forwhich I must very earnestly entreat both the patience and at-tention of the reader : his patience in order to examine a de-tail which may perhaps in some places appear unnecessarilytedious; and his attention in order to understand what may,perhaps, after the fullest explication which I am capable ofgiving it, appear still in some degree obscure. 1 am alwayswilling to run some hazard of being tedious in order to besure that I am perspicuous ; and after taking the utmost painsthat I can to be perspicuous, some obscurity may still appearto remain upon a subject in its own nature extremely ab-stracted.
CHAP. V.
Of the real and nominal Price of Commodities , or of theirPrice in Labour , and their Price in Money .
Every man is rich or poor according to the degree inwhich he can afford to enjoy the necessaries, conveniencies,and amusements of human life. But after the division of la-bour has once thoroughly taken place, it is but a very smallpart of these with which a man’s own labour can supply him.The far greater part of them he must derive from the labourof other people, and he must be rich or poor according to thequantity of that labour which he can command, or which hecan afford to purchase. The value of any commodity, there-fore, to the person who possesses it, and who means not touse or consume it himself, but to exchange it for other com-