the public to know, and for economists to teach.
How many of them have taught it? Some have; but only incidentally; and
others will say it is a truism. If it be, do the public know it? Does
your ordinary English householder know that every costly dinner he gives
has destroyed forever as much money as it is worth? Does every
well-educated girl--do even the women in high political position--know
that every fine dress they wear themselves, or cause to be worn, destroys
precisely so much of the national money as the labor and material of it
are worth? If this be a truism, it is one that needs proclaiming
somewhat louder.

125. That, then, is the relation of money and goods. So much goods, so
much money; so little goods, so little money. But, as there is this true
relation between money and "goods," or good things, so there is a false
relation between money and "bads," or bad things. Many bad things will
fetch a price in exchange; but they do not increase the wealth of the
country. Good wine is wealth, drugged wine is not; good meat is wealth,
putrid meat is not; good pictures are wealth, bad pictures are not. A
thing is worth precisely what it can do for you; not what you choose to
pay for it. You may pay a thousand pounds for a cracked pipkin, if you
please; but you do not by that transaction make the cracked pipkin worth
one that will hold water, nor that, nor any pipkin whatsoever, worth more
than it was before you paid such sum for it. You may, perhaps, induce
many potters to manufacture fissured pots, and many amateurs of clay to
buy them; but the nation is, through the whole business so encouraged,
rich by the addition to its wealth of so many potsherds,--and there an
end. The thing is worth what it CAN do for you, not what you think it
can; and most national luxuries, nowadays, are a form of potsherd,
provided for the solace of a self-complacent Job, voluntary sedent on his
ash-heap.

126. And, also, so far as good things already exist, and have become
media of exchange, the variations in their prices are absolutely
indifferent to the nation. Whether Mr. A. buys a Titian from Mr. B. for
twenty, or for two thousand, pounds, matters not sixpence to the national
revenue; that is to say, it matters in nowise to the revenue whether Mr.
A. has the picture, and Mr. B. the money, or Mr. B. the picture, and Mr.
A. the money. Which of them will spend the money most wisely, and which
of them will keep the pict