IBS T1IF. NATURE AND CAUSES OF

not cost less labour to bring silver to the great town than tothe remote parts of the country, but it costs a great deal moreto bring corn.

In some very rich and commercial countries, such as Hol-land and the territory of Genoa, corn is dear for the samereason that it is dear in great towns. They do not produceenough to maintain their inhabitants. They are rich in theindustry and skill of their artificers and manufacturers, inevery sort of machinery which can facilitate and abridgelabour; in shipping, and in all the other instruments andmeans of carriage and commerce; but they are poor in corn,which, as it must be brought to them from distant countries,must, by an addition to its price, pay lor the carriage fromthose countries. It does not cost less labour to bring silverto Amsterdam than to Dantzick ; but it costs a great dealmore to bring corn. The real cost of silver must be nearlythe same in both places; but that of corn must be very dif-ferent. Diminish the real opulence either of Holland or ofthe territory of Genoa, while the number of their inhabitantsremains the same; diminish their power of supplying them-selves from distant countries; and the price of corn, insteadof sinking with that diminution in the quantity of their silver,which must necessarily accompany this declension either asits cause or as its effect, will rise to the price of a famine.When we are in want of necessaries, we must part with allsuperfluities, of which the value, as it rises in times of opu-lence and prosperity, so it sinks in times of poverty and dis-tress. It is otherwise with necessaries. Their real price, thequantity of labour which they can purchase or command,rises in times of poverty and distress, and sinks in times ofopulence and prosperity, which are always times of greatabundance; for they could not otherwise be times of opu-lence and prosperity. Corn is a necessary, silver is only asuperfluity.

Whatever, therefore, may have been the increase in thequantity of the precious metals, which, during the period be-tween the middle of the fourteenth and that of the sixteenthcentury, arose from the increase of wealth and improvement,it could have no tendency to diminish their value either inGreat Britain or in any other part of Europe . If those whohave collected the prices of things in ancient times, therefore,had, during this period, no reason to infer the diminution ofthe value of silver, from any observations which they had