The
use of any one article of either class as a measure of value tends in
the long-run to injustice either towards creditors or debtors. Labour
may be considered as the most constant in intrinsic value of all
things capable of sale or barter; but the utmost ingenuity of Martial
philosophers has failed to devise a fixed standard by which one kind
of labour can be measured against another, and their respective
productive force, and consequently their value in exchange,
ascertained. One thing alone retains in their opinion an intrinsic
value always the same, and if it increase in value, increases only in
proportion as all produce is obtained in greater quantities or with
greater facility. Land, therefore, is in their estimation
theoretically the best available measure of value--a dogma which has
more practical truth in a planet where population is evenly diffused
and increases very slowly, if at all, than it might have in the
densely but unevenly peopled countries of Europe or Asia. A _stalta_,
or square of about fifty yards (rather more than half an acre), is the
primary standard unit of value.
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