the proposition that the modern price is purely subjective, and that no subjective price can rest on an ethical basis.  The question at issue therefore between what we may call the subjective and objective schools is not whether the sale price was determined by competition in the modern sense, but whether the common estimation of those best qualified to form an opinion on the subject in itself determined the just price, or whether it was merely the most reliable evidence of what the just price in fact was at a particular moment.

[Footnote 1:  Irish Theological Quarterly, vol. ix. p. 41.]

Father Kelleher draws attention to the fact that Aquinas in his article on price did not specifically affirm that the just price was objective, but he explains this omission by saying that the objectivity of the price was so well and universally understood that it was unnecessary expressly to restate it.  Indeed, as we saw above, the teaching of Aquinas on price left a great deal to be supplied by later writers, not because he was in any doubt about the subject, but because the theory was so well understood.  ’Not even in St. Thomas can we find a formal discussion of the moral obligation of observing an objective equivalence in contracts of buying and selling.  He simply took it for granted, as, indeed, was inevitable, seeing that, up to his time and for long after, all Catholic thought and legislation proceeded on that hypothesis.  But that he actually did take it for granted, he has given many clear indications in his article on Justice which leave us no room for reasonable doubt.’[1] As Father Kelleher very cogently points out, the discussion in Aquinas’s article on commerce, whether it was lawful to buy cheap and sell dear, very clearly indicates that the author maintained the objective theory, because if the just price were simply determined by what people were willing to give, this question could not have arisen.

[Footnote 1:  Irish Theological Quarterly, vol. x. p. 165.]

Nor is the fact that the just price admitted of a certain elasticity an argument in favour of its being subjective.  Father Kelleher fully admits that the common estimation was the general criterion of just price, and, of course, the common estimation could not, of its very nature, be rigid and immutable.  Commodities should, indeed, exchange according to their objective value, but, even so, commodities could not carry their value stamped on their faces.  Even if we assume that the standard of exchange was the cost of production, there would still remain room for a certain amount of difference of opinion as to what exactly their value would be in particular instances.  Suppose that the commodity offered for sale was a suit of clothes, in estimating its value on the basis of the cost of production, opinions might differ as to the precise amount of time required for making it, or as to the cost of the cloth out of which it was made.  Unless recourse was to be had to an almost