[Footnote 2:  Vol. iv. p. 146.]

[Footnote 1:  ‘Market Prices,’ vol. ix. p. 398 and vol. x. p. 163; and ‘Father Slater on Just Price and Value,’ vol. xi. p. 159.]

Father Slater draws attention to the fact that Dr. Cunningham overlooked to some extent the importance of common estimation in arriving at the just price.  He points out that, far from objects being invested with some immutable objective value, their value was in fact determined by the price which the community as a whole was willing to pay for them:  ’As the value in exchange will be determined by what the members of the community at the time are prepared to give, ... it will be determined by the social estimation of its utility for the support of life and its scarcity.  It will depend upon its capacity to satisfy the wants and desires of the people with whom commercial transactions are possible and practicable.  Father Slater then goes on categorically to refute Dr. Cunningham’s presentation of the objectivity of price:  ’All that that doctrine asserts is that there should be, and that there is, an equivalent in social value between the commodity and its price at a certain time and in a certain place; it says nothing whatever about the stability or permanence of prices at different times and at different places.  By maintaining that the just price did not depend upon the valuation of the individual buyer or seller the mediaeval doctors did not dream of making it intrinsic to the object.’  In the work on Moral Theology, to which we have referred, expressions occur which lead one to believe that Father Slater did not see any great difference between the mediaeval just price arrived at by common estimation and the modern normal or market price arrived at by open competition.  Thus, in endeavouring to correct Dr. Cunningham’s misunderstanding, Father Slater seems to have gone too far in the other direction, and his position has been ably and, in our judgment, successfully, controverted by Father Kelleher.

The point at issue between the upholders of the two opposing views on just price is well stated by Father Kelleher in the first of his articles on the subject:  ’We must try to find out whether the just and fair price determined the rate of exchange, or whether the rate of exchange, being determined without an objective standard and merely according to the play of human motives, determines what we call the just and fair price.’[1] We have already demonstrated that the common estimation referred to by the mediaeval doctors was something quite apart from the modern higgling in the market; and that, far from being merely the result of unbridled competition on both sides, it was rather the considered judgment of the best-informed members of the community.  As we have seen, even Dr. Cunningham admits that there was a fundamental difference between the common estimation of the scholastics and the modern competitive price.  This is clearly demonstrated by Father Kelleher, who further establishes