An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith (ebook reader macos .TXT) 📕

price should rather be below than above the average market price. In many

places, accordingly, it is not much above one half of this price. Through

the greater part of Scotland this custom still continues with regard to

poultry, and in some places with regard to cattle. It might probably have

continued to take place, too, with regard to corn, had not the institution

of the public fiars put an end to it. These are annual valuations, according

to the judgment of an assize, of the average price of all the different

sorts of grain, and of all the different qualities of each, according to the

actual market price in every different county. This institution rendered it

sufficiently safe for the tenant, and much more convenient for the landlord,

to convert, as they call it, the corn rent, rather at what should happen to

be the price of the fiars of each year, than at any certain fixed price. But

the writers who have collected the prices of corn in ancient times seem

frequently to have mistaken what is called in Scotland the conversion price

for the actual market price. Fleetwood acknowledges, upon one occasion, that

he had made this mistake. As he wrote his book, however, for a particular

purpose, he does not think proper to make this acknowledgment till after

transcribing this conversion price fifteen times. The price is eight

shillings the quarter of wheat. This sum in 1423, the year at which he

begins with it, contained the same quantity of silver as sixteen shillings

of our present money. But in 1562, the year at which he ends with it, it

contained no more than the same nominal sum does at present.

Secondly, they have been misled by the slovenly manner in which some ancient

statutes of assize had been sometimes transcribed by lazy copiers, and

sometimes, perhaps, actually composed by the legislature.

The ancient statutes of assize seem to have begun always with determining

what ought to be the price of bread and ale when the price of wheat and

barley were at the lowest ; and to have proceeded gradually to determine

what it ought to be, according as the prices of those two sorts of grain

should gradually rise above this lowest price. But the transcribers of those

statutes seem frequently to have thought it sufficient to copy the

regulation as far as the three or four first and lowest prices ; saving in

this manner their own labour, and judging, I suppose, that this was enough

to show what proportion ought to be observed in all higher prices.

Thus, in the assize of bread and ale, of the 51st of Henry III. the price of

bread was regulated according to the different prices of wheat, from one

shilling to twenty shillings the quarter of the money of those times. But in

the manuscripts from which all the different editions of the statutes,

preceding that of Mr Ruffhead, were printed, the copiers had never

transcribed this regulation beyond the price of twelve shillings. Several

writers, therefore, being misled by this faulty transcription, very

naturally conclude that the middle price, or six shillings the quarter,

equal to about eighteen shillings of our present money, was the ordinary or

average price of wheat at that time.

In the statute of Tumbrel and Pillory, enacted nearly about the same time,

the price of ale is regulated according to every sixpence rise in the price

of barley, from two shillings, to four shillings the quarter. That four

shillings, however, was not considered as the highest price to which barley

might frequently rise in those times, and that these prices were only given

as an example of the proportion which ought to be observed in all other

prices, whether higher or lower, we may infer from the last words of the

statute: ” Et sic deinceps crescetur vel diminuetur per sex denarios.” The

expression is very slovenly, but the meaning is plain enough, ” that the

price of ale is in this manner to be increased or diminished according to

every sixpence rise or fall in the price of barley.” In the composition of

this statute, the legislature itself seems to have been as negligent as the

copiers were in the transcription of the other.

In an ancient manuscript of the Regiam Majestatem, an old Scotch law book,

there is a statute of assize, in which the price of bread is regulated

according to all the different prices of wheat, from tenpence to three

shillings the Scotch boll, equal to about half an English quarter. Three

shillings Scotch, at the time when this assize is supposed to have been

enacted, were equal to about nine shillings sterling of our present money Mr

Ruddiman seems {See his Preface to Anderson’s Diplomata Scotiae.} to

conclude from this, that three shillings was the highest price to which

wheat ever rose in those times, and that tenpence, a shilling, or at most

two shillings, were the ordinary prices. Upon consulting the manuscript,

however, it appears evidently, that all these prices are only set down as

examples of the proportion which ought to be observed between the respective

prices of wheat and bread. The last words of the statute are ” reliqua

judicabis secundum praescripta, habendo respectum ad pretium bladi.” � ” You

shall judge of the remaining cases, according to what is above written,

having respect to the price of corn.”

Thirdly, they seem to have been misled too, by the very low price at which

wheat was sometimes sold in very ancient times ; and to have imagined, that

as its lowest price was then much lower than in later times its ordinary

price must likewise have been much lower. They might have found, however,

that in those ancient times its highest price was fully as much above, as

its lowest price was below any thing that had ever been known in later

times. Thus, in 1270, Fleetwood gives us two prices of the quarter of wheat.

The one is four pounds sixteen shillings of the money of those times, equal

to fourteen pounds eight shillings of that of the present; the other is six

pounds eight shillings, equal to nineteen pounds four shillings of our

present money. No price can be found in the end of the fifteenth, or

beginning of the sixteenth century, which approaches to the extravagance of

these. The price of corn, though at all times liable to variation varies

most in those turbulent and disorderly societies, in which the interruption

of all commerce and communication hinders the plenty of one part of the

country from relieving the scarcity of another. In the disorderly state of

England under the Plantagenets, who governed it from about the middle of the

twelfth till towards the end of the fifteenth century, one district might be

in plenty, while another, at no great distance, by having its crop

destroyed, either by some accident of the seasons, or by the incursion of

some neighbouring baron, might be suffering all the horrors of a famine; and

yet if the lands of some hostile lord were interposed between them, the one

might not be able to give the least assistance to the other. Under the

vigorous administration of the Tudors, who governed England during the

latter part of the fifteenth, and through the whole of the sixteenth

century, no baron was powerful enough to dare to disturb the public

security.

The reader will find at the end of this chapter all the prices of wheat

which have been collected by Fleetwood, from l202 to 1597, both inclusive,

reduced to the money of the present times, and digested, according to the

order of time, into seven divisions of twelve years each. At the end of each

division, too, he will find the average price of the twelve years of which

it consists. In that long period of time, Fleetwood has been able to collect

the prices of no more than eighty years ; so that four years are wanting to

make out the last twelve years. I have added, therefore, from the accounts

of Eton college, the prices of 1598, 1599, 1600, and 1601. It is the only

addition which I have made. The reader will see, that from the beginning of

the thirteenth till after the middle of the sixteenth century, the average

price of each twelve years grows gradually lower and lower; and that towards

the end of the sixteenth century it begins to rise again. The prices,

indeed, which Fleetwood has been able to collect, seem to have been those

chiefly which were remarkable for extraordinary dearness or cheapness ; and

I do not pretend that any very certain conclusion can be drawn from them. So

far, however, as they prove any thing at all, they confirm the account which

I have been endeavouring to give. Fleetwood himself, however, seems, with

most other writers, to have believed, that, during all this period, the

value of silver, in consequence of its increasing abundance, was continually

diminishing. The prices of corn, which he himself has collected, certainly

do not agree with this opinion. They agree perfectly with that of Mr Dupr�

de St Maur, and with that which I have been endeavouring to explain. Bishop

Fleetwood and Mr Dupr� de St Maur are the two authors who seem to have

collected, with the greatest diligence and fidelity, the prices of things in

ancient times. It is some what curious that, though their opinions are so

very different, their facts, so far as they relate to the price of corn at

least, should coincide so very exactly.

It is not, however, so much from the low price of corn, as from that of some

other parts of the rude produce of land, that the most judicious writers

have inferred the great value of silver in those very ancient times. Corn,

it has been said, being a sort of manufacture, was, in those rude ages, much

dearer in proportion than the greater part of other commodities; it is

meant, I suppose, than the greater part of unmanufactured commodities, such

as cattle, poultry, game of all kinds, etc. That in those times of poverty

and barbarism these were proportionably much cheaper than corn, is

undoubtedly true. But this cheapness was not the effect of the high value of

silver, but of the low value of those commodities. It was not because silver

would in such times purchase or represent a greater quantity of labour, but

because such commodities would purchase or represent a much smaller quantity

than in times of more opulence and improvement. Silver must certainly be

cheaper in Spanish America than in Europe ; in the country where it is

produced, than in the country to which it is brought, at the expense of a

long carriage both by land and by sea, of a freight, and an insurance.

One-and-twenty pence halfpenny sterling, however, we are told by Ulloa, was,

not many years ago, at Buenos Ayres, the price of an ox chosen from a herd

of three or four hundred. Sixteen shillings sterling, we are told by Mr

Byron, was the price of a good horse in the capital of Chili. In a country

naturally fertile, but of which the far greater part is altogether

uncultivated, cattle, poultry, game of all kinds, etc. as they can be

acquired with a very small quantity of labour, so they will purchase or

command but a very small quantity. The low money price for which they may be

sold, is no proof that the real value of silver is there very high, but that

the real value of those commodities is very low.

Labour, it must always be remembered, and not any particular commodity, or

set of commodities, is the real measure of the