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and laborious collectors of the prices of corn, Mr. Dupre deSt. Maur, Mr. Messance, and the author of the Essay on thepolice of grain. But in France , till 1704, the exportation ofgrain was by law prohibited ; and it is somewhat difficult tosuppose, that nearly the same diminution of price which tookplace in one country, notwithstanding this prohibition, shouldin another be owing to the extraordinary encouragementgiven to exportation.

It would be more proper, perhaps, to consider this varia-tion in the average money price of corn as the effect rather ofsome gradual rise in the real value of silver in the European market, than of any fall in the real average value of corn.Corn, it has already been observed, is at distant periods oftime a more accurate measure of value than either silver, orperhaps any other commodity. When, after the discoveryof the abundant mines of America , corn rose to three andfour times its former money price, this change was univer-sally ascribed, not to any rise in the real value of corn, but toa fall in the real value of silver. If during the sixty-four firstyears of the present century, therefore, the average moneyprice of corn has fallen somewhat below what it had beenduring the greater part of the last century, we should in thesame manner impute this change, not to any fall in the realvalue of corn, but to some rise in the real value of silver inthe European market.

The high price of corn during these ten or twelve yearspast, indeed, has occasioned a suspicion that the real valueof silver still continues to fall in the European market. Thishigh price of corn, however, seems evident ly to have been theeffect of the extraordinary unfavourableness of the seasons,and ought therefore to be regarded, not as a permanent, butas a transitory and occasional event. The seasons for theseten or twelve years past have been unfavourable through thegreater part of Europe; and the disorders of Poland havevery much increased the scarcity in all those countries, which,in dear years, used to be supplied from that market. So longa course of bad seasons, though not a very common event, isby no means a singular one; and whoever has inquired muchinto the history of the prices of corn in former times, will beat no loss to recollect several other examples of the samekind. Ten years of extraordinary scarcity, besides, are notmore wonderful than ten years of extraordinary plenty. Thelow price of corn from 1741 to 1750, both inclusive, may