178

THE NATURE AND CAUSES OF

prudent to allow of importation. Six shillings and eight-pence, therefore, containing about the same quantity of silveras thirteen shillings and four-pence of our present money (onethird part less than the same nominal sum contained in thetime of Edward III .) had in those times been considered aswhat is called the moderate and reasonable price of wheat.

In 1554, by the 1st and 2d of Philip and Mary ; and in1558, by the first of Elizabeth, the exportation of wheat wasin the same manner prohibited, whenever the price of thequarter should exceed six shillings and eight-pence, whichdid not then contain two penny-worth more silver than thesame nominal sum does at present. But it had soon beenfound that to restrain the exportation of wheat till the pricewas so very low, was, in reality, to prohibit it altogether. In1502, therefore, by the 5th of Elizabeth, the exportation ofwheat was allowed from certain ports whenever the price ofthe quarter should not exceed ten shillings, containing nearlythe same quantity of silver as the like nominal sum does atpresent. This price had at this time, therefore, been consi-dered as what is called the moderate and reasonable price ofwheat. It agrees nearly with the estimation of the Northum-berland book in 1512.

That in France the average price of grain was, in the samemanner, much lower in the end of the fifteenth and beginningof the sixteenth century, than in the two centuries preceding,has been observed both by Mr. Dupre de St. Maur, and bythe elegant author of the essay on the police of grain. Itsprice, during the same period, had probably sunk in the samemanner through the greater part of Europe .

This rise in the value of silver, in proportion to that ofcorn, may either have been owing altogether to the increaseof the demand for that metal, in consequence of increasingimprovement and cultivation, the supply in the mean timecontinuin'* the same as before: or, the demand continuingthe same as before, it may have been owing altogether to thegradual diminution of the supply; the greater part of themines which were then known in the world being much ex-hausted, and consequently the expense of working them muchincreased : or it may have been owing partly to the one andpartly to the other of those two circumstances. In the endof the fifteenth and beginning of the sixteenth centuries, thegreater part of Europe was approaching towards a more set-tled form of government than it had enjoyed for several ages