authority, they have at an early stage, conquered, as commodities, fixity and authenticity."
To say that, of all commodities, gold and silver are the first the value of which has been constituted, is to say, after all which has preceded it, that gold and silver are the first commodities which have become money. That is the great revelation of M. Proudhon, that is the truth which no one had discovered before him!
If by these words M. Proudhon has wished to say that gold and silver are commodities the time necessary to the production of which has been sooner known than in the case of any others, that would still be one of the suppositions with which he is so ready to gratify his readers. If we wished to hold to this patriachal erudition, we should say to M. Proudhon that the time necessary for the production of the objects of prime necessity, such as iron, &c., was known in the first place. We would make him a present of the classic arch of Adam Smith.
But, after all, how can M. Proudhon speak of the constitution of a value, since one value is never constituted alone? It is constituted not by the time which is necessary for its production alone, but relatively to the quota of all other products which can be created in the same time. Thus the constitution of the value of gold and silver presupposes the constitution to be already established of a mass of other products.
It is then, not the commodity which has arrived, in gold and silver, at the state of "constituted value," it is the "constituted value" of M. Proudhon which has arrived, in gold and silver, at the state of money.
Let us now examine more closely these economic reasons, which, according to M. Proudhon, have afforded gold and silver the advantage of being erected into money
