180

THE NATURE AND CAUSES OE

according to the judgment of an assize, of the average priceof all the different sorts of grain, and of all the different qua-lities of each, according to the actual market price in everydifferent county. This institution rendered it sufficientlysafe for the tenant, and much more convenient for the land-lord, to convert, as they call it, the corn rent, rather at whatshould happen to be the price of the fiars of each year, thanat any certain fixed price. But the writers who have col-lected the prices of corn in ancient times seem frequently tohave mistaken what is called in Scotland the conversion pricefor the actual market price. Fleetwood acknowledges, uponone occasion, that he had made this mistake. As he wrotehis book, however, for a particular purpose, lie does not thinkproper to make this acknowledgment till after transcribingthis conversion price fifteen times. The price is eight shil-lings the quarter of wheat. This sum in 1423, the year atwhich he begins with it, contained the same quantity of silveras sixteen shillings of our present money. But in 1562, theyear at which he ends with it, it contained no more than thesame nominal sum does at present.

Secondly, they have been misled by the slovenly mannerin which some ancient statutes of assize had been sometimestranscribed by lazy copiers; and sometimes, perhaps, actuallycomposed by the legislature.

The ancient statutes of assize seems to have begun alwayswith determining what ought to be the price of bread andale when the price of wheat and barley were at the lowest,and to have proceeded gradually to determine what it oughtto be, according as the prices of those two sorts of grainshould gradually rise above this lowest price. But the tran-scribers of those statutes seem frequently to have thought itsufficient to copy the regulation as far as the three or fourfirst and lowest prices; saving in this manner their own la-bour, and judging, I suppose, that this was enough to shewwhat proportion ought to be observed in all higher places.

Thus in the assize of bread and ale, of the 51st of Henry III .the price of bread was regulated according to the differentprices of wheat, from one shilling to twenty shillings thequarter, of the money of those times. But in the manu-scripts from which all the different editions of the statutes,preceding that of Mr. Rufl'head, were printed, the copiershad never transcribed this regulation beyond the price oftwelve shillings. Several writers, therefore, being misled by