mode
from those caused by character in holders of works of art; and these
again from those caused by character in holders of machinery or other
working capital. But we cannot examine these special phenomena of any
kind of wealth until we have a clear idea of the way in which true
currency expresses them; and of the resulting modes in which the cost
and price of any article are related to its value. To obtain this we
must approach the subject in its first elements.

40. Let us suppose a national store of wealth, composed of material
things either useful, or believed to be so, taken charge of by the
Government,[18] and that every workman, having produced any article
involving labour in its production, and for which he has no immediate
use, brings it to add to this store, receiving from the Government, in
exchange, an order either for the return of the thing itself, or of its
equivalent in other things, such as he may choose out of the store, at
any time when he needs them. The question of equivalence itself (how
much wine a man is to receive in return for so much corn, or how much
coal in return for so much iron) is a quite separate one, which we will
examine presently. For the time, let it be assumed that this equivalence
has been determined, and that the Government order, in exchange for a
fixed weight of any article (called, suppose _a_), is either for the
return of that weight of the article itself, or of another fixed weight
of the article _b_, or another of the article _c_, and so on.

Now, supposing that the labourer speedily and continually presents these
general orders, or, in common language, "spends the money," he has
neither changed the circumstances of the nation, nor his own, except in
so far as he may have produced useful and consumed useless articles, or
_vice versa_. But if he does not use, or uses in part only, the orders
he receives, and lays aside some portion of them; and thus every day
bringing his contribution to the national store, lays by some
per-centage of the orders received in exchange for it, he increases the
national wealth daily by as much as he does not use of the received
order, and to the same amount accumulates a monetary claim on the
Government. It is, of course, always in his power, as it is his legal
right, to bring forward this accumulation of claim, and at once to
consume, destroy, or distribute, the sum of his wealth. Supposing he
never does so, but dies, leaving his claim to oth