“Not quite, mamma. Uncle Antoine and Mr. Steele are sitting between the two big vines, and they say that everybody will be buying wine now that buying and selling are going to begin again.”
It was very true that the young men were enjoying their favourite retreat to the utmost; gilding it with the sunshine of their expectations, and making it as musical with the voice of hope as with the gay songs which were wafted from the revellers below.
They were not a little pleased when their anticipations were countenanced by a letter from Charles which reached his wife on the day of her father’s death, and was not the less in accordance with her feelings for having been written before tidings of the old man’s illness had reached Paris, and being, as usual, hopeful and happy.
“I have written to Antoine,” he said, “to urge all care in the approaching vintage, and all dispatch in the management of our immediate business. Good days are coming at last, unless despotism should bring on itself a new punishment, and rouse once more the spirit of faction, which has been laid to rest this day by that powerful spell, the voice of a united nation. It would astonish you to see how commercial confidence has already revived; and, as a consequence, how the values of all things are becoming fixed; and, again, as a consequence of this, how the intercourses of society are facilitated, and its peace promoted. It was the perception and anticipation of this which to me constituted the chief pleasure of the magnificent solemnity of this day. It was a grand thing to behold the national altar in the midst of an amphitheatre filled with countless thousands; but it was a grander to remember that these thousands were only the representatives of multitudes more who were on tiptoe on all our hills, in all our valleys, watching and listening for the token that they may trust one another once more, and exchange, for their mutual good, the fruits of their toil. It was touching to see the battalion of children,—‘the hope of the nation,’—coming forward to remind the state that it sways the fate of a future age; but it was more touching to think of our own little ones, and to believe that, by the present act, the reward of the social virtues we try to teach them is secured to them.—It was imposing to see one golden flood of light gush from a parting cloud, giving an aspect of blessing to what had before been stormy; but it was as an analogy that it struck us all, and impelled us to send up a shout like the homage of worshippers of the sun. Has not a light broken through the dreariness of our political tempests? There maybe,—let us hope there will be, from this day, order in the elements of our social state. Let but all preserve the faith they have sworn, and there will be no more sporting with life and property, no absurd playing with baubles while there is a craving for bread, no ruin to the industrious, and sudden wealth to such as speculate on national distress. We may once more estimate the labour of our peasantry, and the value of our own resources, and fix and receive the due reward of each. We may reach that high point of national prosperity in which the ascertainment and due recompense of industry involve each other; when the values of things become calculable, and mutual confidence has a solid basis.—I do not say that this prosperity will come, but I hope it will; and if all others have the same hope, it certainly will. It may be that the sovereign will lose his confidence, and go back. It may be that the parliament or the people will do the same; and then may follow worse miseries than we have yet known. But if they see how much social confidence has to do with social prosperity, they will refuse to disturb the tranquillity which has been this day established.
“And now, however you may sigh or smile a the spirit of hope which is in me and Antoine, what say you to it in the case of a nation? Are not its commercial exchanges a most important branch of its intercourses? Must not those exchanges be regulated by some principle of value, instead of being the sport of caprice? Is not that principle the due and equable recompense of labour, or (in business-like terms) the cost of production? Is not this recompense secured by the natural workings of interests—and can these interests work naturally without an anticipation of recompense—that is, without hope, inspiring confidence? Depend upon it, hope is not only the indispensable stimulus of individual action, but the elastic pressure by which society is surrounded and held together. Great is the crime of those who injure it; and especially heinous will be the first trespass on public confidence of any who have been in the Champ de Mars this day. As that which is national springs from that which is individual, I will add that Antoine and Steele are patriotic if they exult in the ripening beauties of Favorite; and if you would be patriotic too, gladden yourself with the promise of our children, and tell me, when we meet, that you trust with me that all will be well both with our wines and our politics.”
Summary of Principles illustrated in this Volume.
There are two kinds of Value: value in use, and value in exchange.
Articles of the greatest value in use may have none in exchange; as they may be enjoyed without labour; and it is labour which confers Exchangeable Value.