are by no means the only high prices which
seem to have been occasioned by the civil
wars.
The second event was the bounty upon the
exportation of corn, granted in 1688. The
bounty, it has been thought by many people,
by encouraging tillage, may, in a long course
of years, have occasioned a greater abundance,
and, consequently, a greater cheapness of corn
in the home market, than what would otherwise
have taken place there. How far the
bounty could produce this effect at any time
I shall examine hereafter: I shall only observe
at present, that between 1688 and 1700,
it had not time to produce any such effect.
During this short period, its only effect must
have been, by encouraging the exportation of
the surplus produce of every year, and thereby
hindering the abundance of one year from
compensating the scarcity of another, to raise
the price in the home market. The scarcity
which prevailed in England, from 1693 to
1699, both inclusive, though no doubt principally
owing to the badness of the seasons, and,
therefore, extending through a considerable
part of Europe, must have been somewhat enhanced
by the bounty. In 1699, accordingly,
the further exportation of corn was prohibited
for nine months.
There was a third event which occurred
in the course of the same period, and which,
though it could not occasion any scarcity of
corn, nor, perhaps, any augmentation in the
real quantity of silver which was usually paid
for it, must necessarily have occasioned some
augmentation in the nominal sum. This event
was the great debasement of the silver coin,
by clipping and wearing. This evil had begun
in the reign of Charles II. and had gone on
continually increasing till 1695; at which
time, as we may learn from Mr Lowndes, the
current silver coin was, at an average, near
five-and-twenty per cent. below its standard
value. But the nominal sum which constitutes
the market price of every commodity is
necessarily regulated, not so much by the
quantity of silver, which, according to the
standard, ought to be contained in it, as by
that which, it is found by experience, actually
is contained in it. This nominal sum, therefore,
is necessarily higher when the coin is
much debased by clipping and wearing, than
when near to its standard value.
In the course of the present century, the
silver coin has not at any time been more below
its standard weight than it is at present.
But though very much defaced, its value has
been kept up by that of the gold coin, for
which it is exchanged. For though, before
the late recoinage, the gold coin was a good
deal defaced too, it was less so than the silver.
In 1695, on the contrary, the value of the silver
coin was not kept up by the gold coin; a
guinea then commonly exchanging for thirty
shillings of the worn and clipt silver. Before
the late recoinage of the gold, the price of silver
bullion was seldom higher than five shillings
and sevenpence an ounce, which is but
fivepence above the mint price. But in 1695,
the common price of silver bullion was six shillings
and fivepence an ounce,[17] which is fifteen
pence above the mint price. Even before the
late recoinage of the gold, therefore, the coin,
gold and silver together, when compared with
silver bullion, was not supposed to be more
than eight per cent below its standard value.
In 1695, on the contrary, it had been supposed
to be near five-and-twenty per cent. below that
value. But in the beginning of the present
century, that is, immediately after the great
recoinage in King William's time, the greater
part of the current silver coin must have been
still nearer to its standard weight than it is at
present. In the course of the present century,
too, there has been no great public calamity,
such as a civil war, which could rather discourage,
or interrupt the interior commerce
of the country. And though the bounty which
has taken place through the greater part of
this century, must always raise the price of
corn somewhat higher than it otherwise would
be in the actual state of tillage; yet, as in the
course of this century, the bounty has had full
time to produce all the good effects commonly
imputed to it to encourage tillage, and thereby
to increase the quantity of corn in the home
market, it may, open the principles of a system
which I shall explain and examine hereafter,
be supposed to have done something to
lower the price of that commodity the one
way, as well as to raise it the other. It is by
many people supposed to have done more. In
the sixty-four years of the present century,
accordingly, the average price of the quarter
of nine bushels of the best wheat, at Windsor
market, appears, by the accounts of Eton college,
to have been L.2 : 0 : 610⁄32, which is
about ten shillings and sixpence, or more than
five-and-twenty per cent. cheaper than it had
been during the sixty-four last years of the
last century; and about nine shillings and
sixpence cheaper than is had been during the
sixteen years preceding 1636, when the discovery
of the abundant mines of America may
be supposed to have produced its full effect;
and about one shilling cheaper than it had
been in the twenty-six years preceding 1620,
before that discovery can well be supposed to
have produced its full effect. According to
this account, the average price of middle wheat,
during these sixty-four first years of the present
century, comes out to have been about
thirty-two shillings the quarter of eight bushels.
The value of silver, therefore, seems to have
risen somewhat in proportion to that of corn
during the course of the present century, and
it had probably begun to do so even some
time before the end of the last.