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For the counties marked thus *, the prices were extractedfrom the Farmer’s Magazine, being the average of the high-est returns of the three quarterly reports ending with May1811 .
In those counties which are not included in the above ta-ble, the price of provisions is regulated entirely by, and is al-ways nearly similar to, the price of the market of the chieftown in the district. Thus the prices of all the necessariesof life in Renfrewshire, are completely regulated by the Glas-gow market; and even the western coast of Argyleshire, fromrequiring an annual supply of about 20,000 bolls of oatmeal,and which is chiefly brought from Glasgow , must be regulat-ed by the same market. In Linlithgowshire also, prices de-pend entirely upon the Edinburgh market; and in the north,the Inverness market determines the prices for all the adja-cent districts.
SECT. V.
OF THE RELATIVE PRICE OF PROVISIONS, AND OFRURAL LABOUR.
In England, a peck of wheat, and in Scotland , a peck of oat-tneal, 8|. lb. avoirdupois, (being the principal articles of sub-sistence of the lower orders of the people in the two coun-tries), have long been considered as equivalent to the dailypay of a labourer.
In Scotland , this proceeded on the idea, that the price ofmeal, for a considerable space of time, was at such a rate, aswould enable a labourer, to buy six pecks of mealier week,°r nineteen and a half bolls per annum, each boll containing