arrest his attention upon the fact.

A peasant who has harvested twenty sacks of wheat, which he with
his family proposes to consume, deems himself twice as rich
as if he had harvested only ten; likewise a housewife who has
spun fifty yards of linen believes that she is twice as rich as
if she had spun but twenty- five. Relatively to the household,
both are right; looked at in their external relations, they may
be utterly mistaken. If the crop of wheat is double throughout
the whole country, twenty sacks will sell for less than ten would
have sold for if it had been but half as great; so, under similar
circumstances, fifty yards of linen will be worth less than
twenty-five: so that value decreases as the production of utility
increases, and a producer may arrive at poverty by continually
enriching himself. And this seems unalterable, inasmuch as there
is no way of escape except all the products of industry become
infinite in quantity, like air and light, which is absurd. God
of my reason! Jean Jacques would have said: it is not the
economists who are irrational; it is political economy itself
which is false to its definitions. Mentita est iniquitas sibi.

In the preceding examples the useful value exceeds the
exchangeable value: in other cases it is less. Then the same
phenomenon is produced, but in the opposite direction: the
balance is in favor of the producer, while the consumer suffers.
This is notably the case in seasons of scarcity, when the high
price of provisions is always more or less factitious. There are
also professions whose whole art consists in giving to an article
of minor usefulness, which could easily be dispensed with, an
exaggerated value of opinion: such, in general, are the arts of