CHAP. XI.

CONSUMPTION OF GOLD AND SILVER.

SOI

CHAPTER XI.

On the consumption of gold and silver in the centuries fromthe conclusion of the western empire to the discovery ofAmerica .

The manners of a society must necessarilyhave a vast influence on the consumption of theprecious metals which exist within it. In theage of Charlemagne and in those of his suc-cessors during the following centuries, both themonarchs and their most powerful nobles werethe great proprietors of the soil, and cultivatedit for the maintenance of their households, bymeans of various descriptions of vassals, who,however distinguished by the greater or lessdegree of severity of their servitude, were in acondition little better than that of slaves. Everything required for the domestic establishmentsof even monarchs themselves, with the excep-tion of a few foreign luxuries, was drawn fromtheir own farms, and their ordinary clothing wasmade in their own houses ; and thus it becameconvenient to them to live,, as they chiefly did,on their estates. From this mode of subsisting