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In reply to Nerio Naldi's query regarding "the quantity of labor 
commanded" before Smith, I offer the following observations: 
  
William Petty proposed to judge the purchasing power of silver in terms 
of labor units "commanded" in Treatise of Taxes (1662).  See Charles Henry 
Hull, __The Economic Writings of Sir William Petty__ , vol. 1, p. 51:  "the 
time wherein each Devisee had wherewith to hire most labourers was the 
richer."  A few pages later he applies the same measure to judge the 
purchasing power of tythes paid:  though tythes had increased in nominal 
terms some 12 times over the preceding 400 years, Petty concluded that "we 
shall rather say that the Tythes are but six times as good now as four 
hundred years ago, that is, that the Tythes now would pay six times as many 
Labourers, or feed six times as many mouthes, as the Tythes four hundred 
years ago would have done" (ibid, p. 78).   
 
That the laborer's wage serves as an ideal deflator is given added force 
by the assumption that the magistrates will adjust the legally established 
wage to maintain the real wage unchanged over time:  "Now the price of 
labour must be certain, (as we see it made by the Statutes which limit the 
day wages of several work men;) the non-observance of which Laws, and the 
not adapting them to the change of times is by the way very dangerous and 
confusive to all endeavours of bettering the Trade of the Nation" (ibid, p. 
52, see also p. 87).  This notion of a fixed, legally established real wage 
was not unique to Petty.  Rice Vaughan had claimed some thirty years earlier 
(in the early 1630s) "that Reason doth convince that there must be a 
convenient Proportion between [laborers'] Wages and their Food and Raiment, 
the Wisdom of the Statute doth confirm it, which doth always direct the Rate 
of Labourers and Servants to be made with a regard of the Prices of 
Victuals, Apparel, and other things necessary to their use" (__Discourse of 
Coin and Coinage__ in J. R. McCulloch, __Old and Scarce Tracts on Money__, 
p. 59.)  We find elsewhere in the 17th and 18th centuries this notion that 
the wage serves as an appropriate deflator, producing a "labor-commanded" 
unit of value measure  An oft-cited example is Benjamin Franklin, who echoed 
a common view of his time that "the Riches of a Country are to be valued by 
the Quantity of Labour its Inhabitants are able to purchase" ("Modest 
Inquiry into the Nature and Necessity of Paper Currency" [1729], __Life and 
Writings__, ed. by Albert Henry Smyth, vol. II, p. 144) 
 
Some further discussion of these points can be found in my piece on "Sir 
William Petty on Value: A Reconsideration," in Warren J. Samuels, ed., 
__Research in the History of Economic Thought and Methodology__, vol, 4 
(1986). 
 
Glenn Hueckel  
 
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