In March 1764, there was a parliamentary
inquiry into the causes of the high price of
provisions at that time. It was then, among
other proof to the same purpose, given in evidence
by a Virginia merchant, that in March
1763, he had victualled his ships for twenty-four
or twenty-five shillings the hundred
weight of beef, which he considered as the ordinary
price; whereas, in that dear year, he
had paid twenty-seven shillings for the same
weight and sort. This high price in 1764 is,
however, four shillings and eight-pence cheaper
than the ordinary price paid by Prince
Henry; and it is the best beef only, it must
be observed, which is fit to be salted for those
distant voyages.
The price paid by Prince Henry amounts
to 3d. 4-5ths per pound weight of the whole
carcase, coarse and choice pieces taken together;
and at that rate the choice pieces could
not have been sold by retail for less than 4½d.
or 5d. the pound.
In the parliamentary inquiry in 1764, the
witnesses stated the price of the choice pieces
of the best beef to be to the consumer 4d. and
4½d. the pound; and the coarse pieces in general
to be from seven farthings to 2½d. and
2¾d.; and this, they said, was in general one
halfpenny dearer than the same sort of pieces
had usually been sold in the month of March.
But even this high price is still a good deal
cheaper than what we can well suppose the
ordinary retail price to have been in the time
of Prince Henry.
During the first twelve years of the last century,
the average price of the best wheat at
the Windsor market was L.1 : 18 : 3½d. the
quarter of nine Winchester bushels.
But in the twelve years preceding 1764,
including that year, the average price of the
same measure of the best wheat at the same
market was L.2 : 1 : 9½d.
In the first twelve years of the last century,
therefore, wheat appears to have been a good
deal cheaper, and butcher's meat a good deal
dearer, than in the twelve years preceding
1764, including that year.
In all great countries, the greater part of
the cultivated lands are employed in producing
either food for men or food for cattle.
The rent and profit of these regulate the rent
and profit of all other cultivated land. If any
particular produce afforded less, the land would
soon be turned into corn or pasture; and if
any afforded more, some part of the lands in
corn or pasture would soon be turned to that
produce.
Those productions, indeed, which require
either a greater original expense of improvement,
or a greater annual expense of cultivation
in order to fit the land for them, appear
commonly to afford, the one a greater rent,
the other a greater profit, than corn pasture.
This superiority, however, will seldom
be found to amount to more than a reasonable
interest or compensation for this superior
expense.
In a hop garden, a fruit garden, a kitchen
garden, both the rent of the landlord, and the
profit of the farmer, are generally greater than
in a corn or grass field. But to bring the
ground into this condition requires more expense.
Hence a greater rent becomes due to
the landlord. It requires, too, a more attentive
and skilful management. Hence a greater
profit becomes due to the farmer. The
crop, too, at least in the hop and fruit garden,
is more precarious. Its price, therefore, besides
compensating all occasional losses, must
afford something like the profit of insurance.
The circumstances of gardeners, generally
mean, and always moderate, may satisfy us
that their great ingenuity is not commonly
over-recompensed. Their delightful art is
practised by so many rich people for amusement,
that little advantage is to be made by
these who practise it for profit; because the
persons who should naturally be their best
customers, supply themselves with all their
most precious productions.
The advantage which the landlord derives
from such improvements, seems at no time to
have been greater than what was sufficient to
compensate the original expense of making
them. In the ancient husbandry, after the
vineyard, a well-watered kitchen garden seems
to have been the part of the farm which was
supposed to yield the most valuable produce.
But Democritus, who wrote upon husbandry
about two thousand years ago, and who was
regarded by the ancients as one of the fathers
the of the art, thought they did not act wisely
who inclosed a kitchen garden. The profit,
he said, would not compensate the expense of
a stone-wall: and bricks (he meant, I suppose,
bricks baked in the sun) mouldered with
the rain and the winter-storm, and required
continual repairs. Columella, who reports
this judgment of Democritus, does not controvert
it, but proposes a very frugal method
of inclosing with a hedge of brambles and
briars, which he says he had found by experience
to be both a lasting and an impenetrable
fence; but which, it seems, was not commonly
known in the time of Democritus. Palladius
adopts the opinion of Columella, which
had before been recommended by Varro. In
the judgment of these ancient improvers, the
produce of a kitchen garden had, it seems,
been little more than sufficient to pay the extraordinary
culture and the expense of watering;
for in countries so near the sun, it was
thought proper, in those times as in the present,
to have the command of a stream of water,
which could be conducted to every bed in
the garden. Through the greater part of Europe,
a kitchen garden is not at present supposed
to deserve a better inclosure than that
recommended by Columella. In Great Britain,
and some other northern countries, the