192
THE NATURE AND CAUSES OF
at any time been more below its standard weight than it is atpresent. But though very much defaced, its value has beenkept up by that of the gold coin for which it is exchanged.For though before the late re-coinage, the gold coin was agood deal defaced too, it was less so than the silver. In 1G95,on the contrary, the value of the silver coin was not kept up bythe gold coin ; a guinea then commonly exchanging for thirtyshillings of the worn and dipt silver. Before the late re-coinage of the gold, the price of silver bullion was seldomhigher than five shillings and seven-pence an ounce, whichis but five-pence above the mint price. But in 1G95, thecommon price of silver bullion was six shillings and five-pence an ounce,* which is fifteen-pence above the mint price.Even before the late re-coinage of the gold, therefore, thecoin, gold and silver together, when compared with silverbullion, was not supposed to be more than eight per cent,below its standard value. In 1G95, on the contrary, it hadbeen supposed to be near five-and-twenty per cent, below thatvalue. But in the beginning of the present century, that is,immediately after the great re-coinage in King William’stime, the greater part of the current silver coin must havebeen still nearer to its standard weight than it is at present.In the course of the present century loo there has been nogreat public calamity, such as the civil war, which couldeither discourage tillage, or interrupt the interior commerceof the country. And though the bounty which has takenplace through the greater part of this century, must alwaysraise the price of corn somewhat higher than it otherwisewould be in the actual state of tillage; yet as, in the courseof this century, the bounty has had full time to produce allthe good effects commonly imputed to it, to encourage tillage,and thereby to increase the quantity of corn in the homemarket, it may, upon the principles of a system which I shallexplain and examine hereafter, be supposed to have done some-thing to lower the price of that commodity the one way, as wellas to raise it the other. It is by many people supposed to havedone more. In the sixty-four years of the present century,accordingly, the average price of the quarter of nine bushelsof the best wheat at Windsor market, appears, by the accountsof Eton College , to have been 21 . Cb. Gj-jk/. which is about tenshillings and sixpence, or more than five-and-twenty per cent,cheaper, than it had been during the sixty-four last years