THE WEALTH OF NATIONS.

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the course of the present century, to have fallen a good dealin proportion to As quality. Quality, however, is so verydisputable a matter, that I look upon all information of thiskind as somewhat uncertain. In the clothing manufacture,the division of labour is nearly the same now as it was acentury ago, and the machinery employed is not very diffe-rent. There may, however, have been some small improve-ments in both, which may have occasioned some reductionof price.

But the reduction will appear much more sensible and un-deniable, if we compare the price of this manufacture in thepresent times with what it was in a much remoter period,towards the end of the fifteenth century, when the labour wasprobably much less subdivided, and the machinery employedmuch more imperfect than it is at present.

In 1487, being the 4th of Henry VII . it was enacted, that“ whosoever shall sell by retail a broad yard of the finestscarlet grained, or of other grained cloth, of the finest making,above sixteen shillings, shall forfeit forty shillings for everyyard so sold.” Sixteen shillings, therefore, containing aboutthe same quantity of silver as four-and-twenty shillings ofour present money, was, at that time, reckoned not an unrea-sonable price for a yard of the finest cloth; and as this is asumptuary law, such cloth, it is probable, had usually beensold somewhat dearer. A guinea may be reckoned the high-est price in the present times. Even though the quality ofthe cloths, therefore, should be supposed equal, and that of thepresent times is most probably much superior, yet, even uponthis supposition, the money price of the finest cloth appearsto have been considerably reduced since the end of the fifteenthcentury. But its real price has been much more reduced.Six shillings and eight-pence was then, and long afterward,reckoned the average price of a quarter of wheat. Sixteenshillings, therefore, was the price of two quarters and morethan three bushels of wheat. Valuing a quarter of wheat inthe present times at eight-and-twenty shillings, the real priceof a yard of line cloth must, in those times, have been equalto at least three pounds six shillings and six-pence of ourpresent money. The man who bought it must have partedwith the command of a quantity of labour and subsistenceequal to what that sum would purchase in the present times.

The reduction in the real price of the coarse manufacture,though considerable, has not been so great as in thatof thefine.