[Footnote 2:  Art.  ‘Political Economy.’]

[Footnote 3:  Growth of English Industry and Commerce, vol. i. p. 461.]

[Footnote 4:  Christianity and Economic Science, p. 29.]

Sec. 6. Was the Just Price Subjective or Objective?

The question whether the just price was essentially subjective or objective has recently formed the subject matter of an interesting and ably conducted discussion, provoked by certain remarks in Dr. Cunningham’s Western Civilisation.[1] Dr. Cunningham, although admiring the ethical spirit which animated the conception of the just price, thought at the same time that the economic ideas underlying the conception were so undeveloped and unsound that the theory could not be applied in practice at the present day.  ’Their economic analysis was very defective, and the theory of price which they put forward was untenable; but the ethical standpoint which they took is well worth examination, and the practical measures which they recommended appear to have been highly beneficial in the circumstances in which they had to deal.  Their actions were not unwise; their common-sense morality was sound; but the economic theories by which they tried to give an intellectual justification for their rules and their practice were quite erroneous....  The attempt to determine an ideal price implies that there can and ought to be stability in relative values and stability in the measure of values—­which is absurd.  The mediaeval doctrine and its application rested upon another assumption which we have outlived.  Value is not a quality which inheres in an object so that it can have the same worth for everybody; it arises from the personal preference and needs of different people, some of whom desire a thing more and some less, some of whom want to use it in one way and some in another.  Value is not objective—­intrinsic in the object—­but subjective, varying with the desire and intentions of the possessors or would-be possessors; and, because it is thus subjective, there cannot be a definite ideal value which every article ought to possess, and still more a just price as the measure of that ideal value.’  In these and similar observations to be found in the Growth of English History and Commerce, Dr. Cunningham showed that he profoundly misunderstood the doctrine of the just price; the objectivity which he attributed to it was not the objectivity ascribed to it by the scholastics.  It was to correct this misunderstanding that Father Slater contributed an article to the Irish Theological Quarterly[2] pointing out that the just price was subjective rather than objective.  This article, which was afterwards reprinted in Some Aspects of Moral Theology, and the conclusions of which were embodied in the same writer’s work on Moral Theology, was controverted in a series of articles by Father Kelleher in the Irish Theological Quarterly.[3]

[Footnote 1:  Pp. 77-9.]