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THE NATURE AND CAUSES OF

moderate plenty. If his calculations deserve any part of thereputation which they have obtained very universally, eight-and-forty shillings the quarter was a price which, withoutsome such expedient a.s the bounty, could not at that time beexpected, except in years of extraordinary scarcity. But thegovernment of King William was not then fully settled. Itwas in no condition to refuse any thing to the country gen-tlemen, from whom it was at that very time soliciting thefirst establishment of the annual land-tax.

The value of silver, therefore, in proportion to that of corn,had probably risen somewhat before the end of the last cen-tury ; and it seems to have continued to do so during thecourse of the greater part of the present; though the neces-sary operation of the bounty must have hindered that risefrom being so sensible as it otherwise would have been in theactual state of tillage.

In plentiful years the bounty, by occasioning an extraor-dinary exportation, necessarily raises the price of corn abovewhat it otherwise would be in those years. To encouragetillage, by keeping up the price of corn even in the most plen-tiful years, was the avowed end of the institution.

In years of great scarcity, indeed, the bounty has generallybeen suspended. It must, however, have had some effectupon the prices of many of those years. By the extraordi-nary exportation which it occasions in years of plenty, it mustfrequently hinder the plenty of one year from compensatingthe scarcity of another.

Both in years of plenty and in years of scarcity, therefore,the bounty raises the price of corn above what it naturallywould be in the actual state of tillage. If, during the sixty-four first years of the present century, therefore, the averageprice has been lower than during the sixty-tour last years ofthe last century, it must, in the same state of tillage, have beenmuch more so, had it not been for this operation of the bounty.

But without the bounty, it may be said, the state of tillagewould not have been the same. What may have been theeffects of this institution upon the agriculture of the country,I shall endeavour to explain hereafter, when I come to treatparticularly of bounties. I shall only observe at present, thatthis rise in the value of silver, in proportion to that of corn,has not been peculiar to England. It has been observed tohave taken place in France during the same period, and nearlyin the same proportion too, by three very faithful, diligent,