THE WEALTH O E NATIONS.

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gradually lower and lower ; and that towards the end of thesixteenth century it begins to rise again. The prices, indeed,which Fleetwood has been able to collect, seem to have beenthose chiefly which were remarkable for extraordinary dear-ness or cheapness; and I do not pretend that any very certainconclusion can be drawn from them. So far, however, as theyprove any thing at all, they confirm the account which I havebeen endeavouring to give. Fleetwood himself, however,seems, with most other writers, to have believed, that duringall this period the value of silver, in consequence of its in-creasing abundance, was continually diminishing. The pricesof corn, which he himself has collected, certainly do not agreewith this opinion. They agree perfectly with that of Mr. Du-pre de St. Maur, and with that which I have been endea-vouring to explain. Bishop Fleetwood and Mr. Dupre deSt. Maur are the two authors who seem to have collected,with the greatest diligence and fidelity, the prices of things inancient times. It is somewhat curious that, though theiropinions are so very different, their facts, so far as theyrelate to the price of corn at least, should coincide so veryexactly.

It is not, however, so much from the low price of corn, asfrom that of some other parts of the rude produce of land,that the most judicious writers have inferred the great valueof silver in those very ancient times. Corn, it has been said,being a sort of manufacture, was, in those rude ages, muchdearer in proportion than the greater part of other commodi-ties ; it is meant, I suppose, than the greater part of unma-nufactured commodities; such as cattle, poultry, game of allkinds, &c. That in those times of poverty and barbarism thesewere proportionally much cheaper than corn, is undoubtedlytrue. But this cheapness was not the effect of the high valueof silver, but of the low value of those commodities. It wasnot because silver would in such times purchase or repre-sent a greater quantity of labour, but because such com-modities would purchase or represent a much smallerquantity than in times of more opulence and improvement.Silver must certainly be cheaper in Spanish America thanin Europe ; in the country where it is produced than in thecountry to which it is brought, at the expense of a long car-riage both by land and sea, of a freight and an insurance.One-and-twenty pence halfpenny sterling, however, we aretold by Ulloa, was, not many years ago, at Buenos Ayres,