Note 165 — Chapter IX · JOHN STUART MILL
Reading edition
It may be useful to recall the explanation Ricardo made of his position with regard to this point. “I have not said, because one commodity has so much labour bestowed upon it as will cost £1000 and another so much as will cost £2000 that therefore one would be of the value of £1000 and the other of the value of £2000, but I have said that their value will be to each other as two to one.... It is of no importance to the truth of this doctrine, whether one of these commodities sells for £1100 and the other for £2200, or one for £1500 and the other for £3000.” (Gonner ed. Ricardo’s Principles, p. 39.) The interest qualification signifies that the commodities may exchange at other ratios than two to one.