ABSTRACT
More commenced his discussion of a complex topic by defining goodwill as the patronage of the public and linking it with profit returns. A considerable part of the discussion was devoted to this relationship in terms of the problem of valuing goodwill. More was concerned to demonstrate the determination of such values by separating normal from excess returns on capital. In his view, the latter constituted the basis for the production of goodwill valuations - the excess profits being suitably discounted over a number of years at the excess rate of return. The goodwill attaching to Professions, as distinguished from Trades, is seldom of any great value, the reason being that there is so much of the individual element bound up with it— that, for sale purposes, it is practically valueless. Goodwill, or, at all events, a certain kind of it, is, in the eye of the law, property, which may be transferred from one man to another.
