ADVANCE OF PRICES

CHAP. XIX.

This account is given in livres, sols, and deniers,whose proportions to each other are the same asour pounds, shillings, and pence. In France , asin England, the process of diminishing the weightof the livre, which in the time of Charlemagne had been a pound weight of silver, had been con-stantly going on from 768 to 1720 , when itreached its present or rather its late value ofabout ten-pence halfpenny sterling.

According to the table, as calculated in the“ Traite des Monnoies et de la Jurisdiction dela Cour des Monnoies published by Bazinghen,1764, vol. i. p. 642, it is shown that the value ofthe livre, as estimated by the pure silver it con-tained, was from 1483 to 1497 equal to four livresten sols of the existing livre, that from 1497 1°1514 it was equal to three livres nineteen sols, andthat from 1573 to 1589 it was only worth twolivres twelve sols. The preceding table exhibits anadvance of prices nearly amounting to seven hun-dred per cent.; but when the discrepancies arisingfrom the variations in the value of the coin aretaken into the calculation, that enormous advancewill be reduced down to a rate of increase moreconsonant to that which appears to have takenplace in England at the same time. The advance,instead of being from eight pounds ten shillingsand four-pence to sixty-two pounds fifteen shil-lings and four-pence, will be only from thirty-threepounds nine shillings and nine-pence to one hun-