of the mast, and it is only in unforeseen danger that a
skilful seaman ever carries all the canvas his spars will bear, states
of mercantile languor are like the flap of the sail in a calm; of
mercantile precaution, like taking in reefs; and mercantile ruin is
instant on the breaking of the mast.

[I mean by credit-power, the general impression on the national mind
that a sovereign, or any other coin, is worth so much bread and
cheese--so much wine--so much horse and carriage--or so much fine art:
it may be really worth, when tried, less or more than is thought: the
thought of it is the credit-power.]

[25] The object of Political Economy is not to buy, nor to sell labour,
but to spare it. Every attempt to buy or sell it is, in the outcome,
ineffectual; so far as successful, it is not sale, but Betrayal; and the
purchase-money is a part of that thirty pieces which bought, first the
greatest of labours, and afterwards the burial-field of the Stranger;
for this purchase-money, being in its very smallness or vileness the
exactly measured opposite of the "vilis annona amicorum," makes all men
strangers to each other.

[26] Cicero's distinction, "sordidi quaestus, quorum operae, non quorum
artes emuntur," admirable in principle, is inaccurate in expression,
because Cicero did not practically know how much operative dexterity is
necessary in all the higher arts; but the cost of this dexterity is
incalculable. Be it great or small, the "cost" of the mere perfectness
of touch in a hammer-stroke of Donatello's, or a pencil-touch of
Correggio's, is inestimable by any ordinary arithmetic.

[Old notes, these, more embarrassing I now perceive, than elucidatory;
but right, and worth retaining.]

[27] Only observe, as some labour is more destructive of life than other
labour, the hour or day of the more destructive toil is supposed to
include proportionate rest. Though men do not, or cannot, usually take
such rest, except in death.

[28] There is, therefore, observe, no such thing as cheapness (in the
common use of that term), without some error or injustice. A thing is
said to be cheap, not because it is common, but because it is supposed
to be sold under its worth. Everything has its proper and true worth at
any given time, in relation to everything else; and at that worth should
be bought and sold. If sold under it, it is cheap to the buyer by
exactly so much as the seller loses, and no more. Putrid meat, at
twopence a pound