56. Personal property has an exchangeable value, even for
land itself.
A man that would have been possessed of a quantity of lands
without cattle or slaves, would undoubtedly have made an
advantageous bargain, in yielding a part of his land, to a person
that would have offered him in exchange, cattle and slaves to
cultivate the rest. It is chiefly by this principle that property
in land entered likewise into commerce, and had a comparative
value with that of all the other goods. If four bushels of corn,
the net produce of an acre of land, was worth six sheep, the acre
itself that feeds them could have been given for a certain value,
greater indeed, but always easy to settle by the same way, as the
price of other wares. Namely, at first by debates among the two
contractors, next, by the current price established by the
agreement of those who exchange land for cattle, or the contrary.
It is by the scale of this current specie that lands are
appraised, when a debtor is prosecuted by his creditor, and is
constrained to yield up his property.
