THEORY OR INTERNATIONAL VALUES
609
‘ final ’ with integral utility ; ignoring the principle of ‘ consumer’s
rent.’1 However, it may be admitted that his definition is
adequate to the purposes for which it is used. Where he says
that the whole or none, or more or less, of the advantage will
accrue to a certain country, it is generally true I think, not only
in his sense, but in the more correct sense.
The splendid edifice of - theory constructed in the first five
sections is not improved by the superstructure of later date
which forms the latter part of the chapter. This second story
does not carry us much higher. What seems at first sight to be
an addition will be found, I think, also in the first part ; I mean
what Cournot calls the ‘ reflux ’ of capital and labour ; the sort
of change which occurs when Germany has obtained cloth from
England ‘ with only seven-eighths of the labour and capital
which she previously expended in supplying herself with cloth,
and may expend the remainder in increasing her own con-
sumption of linen or any other commodity ’ (ch. xviii. § 8,
first paragraph). But the statement in the original part (§ 5,.
penultimate paragraph) is equally accurate : ‘ In the case-
supposed the consumers of Germany have had part of their
incomes set at liberty by the increased cheapness of linen which
they may indeed expend in increasing their consumption of'
that article, but which they may likewise expend in other
articles.’ (Cf. ibid., last paragraph.)
In short, I agree with Prof. Bastable2 in regarding the super-
structure as ‘ laborious and confusing.’8 The last epithet seems,
15) to (20 minus 15) ; 20 and 15 (yards of linen in exchange for 10 of cloth) being th®
limits fixed by the respective costs of production, and 17 the value actually set up. (See
ch. xviii. ante-penultimate section, et passim.) But Mill need not, ɪ think, be held
to that precise statement; and then Cournot’s objection amounts to no more than
this : that there is a certain asymmetry and inelegance in expressing the share of
the total gain in terms of the commodity purchased by one of the parties (‘ linen ’).
Cournot’s objection is partly directed against the expression of the gain of one
party as a percentage—e.g. the gain of England as 20 per cent., if before the trade she
obtained 15 of linen, and after the trade 18 for the same quantity of cloth. Has Mill
employed such a percentage in the passage quoted in the next note ?
1 Cf. Book V. ch. x. § 1, par. 5. ‘ The amount of national loss is measured by
the excess of the price at which the commodity is produced over that at which it
could be imported.’ Cf. Jevons’ Theory, ch. iv., on the gain by exchange.
2 Internat. Trade, p. 29, note.
3 The following interpretation of this difficult supplement may be useful.
We begin by supposing (A) that ‘ in both countries any given increase of cheap-
ness produces an exactly proportional increase of consumption, or in other words
that . . . the [real] cost incurred for the sake of obtaining it is always the same ’
(sec. 2, par. 2).
A (1). In the first case considered (Iδ., par. 8) England expends in procuring
linen, whatever its rate of exchange with cloth, the cost of producing a million
yards of -cloth. Before the trade, England obtained a million yards of linen for