In 1687, the price of the quarter of nine
bushels of the best wheat, at Windsor market,
was L.1 : 5 : 2, the lowest price at which it
had ever been from 1595.
In 1688, Mr Gregory King, a man famous
for his knowledge in matters of this kind,
estimated the average price of wheat, in years
of moderate plenty, to be to the grower 3s.
6d. the bushel, or eight-and-twenty shillings
the quarter. The grower's price I understand
to be the same with what is sometimes
called the contract price, or the price at which
a farmer contracts for a certain number of
years to deliver a certain quantity of corn to a
dealer. As a contract of this kind saves the farmer
the expense and trouble of marketing, the
contract price is generally lower than what is
supposed to be the average market price. Mr
King had judged eight-and-twenty shillings
the quarter to be at that time the ordinary
contract price in years of moderate plenty.
Before the scarcity occasioned by the late
extraordinary course of bad seasons, it was, I
have been assured, the ordinary contract price
in all common years.
In 1688 was granted the parliamentary
bounty upon the exportation of corn. The
country gentlemen, who then composed a still
greater proportion of the legislature than they
do at present, had felt that the money price
of corn was falling. The bounty was an expedient
to raise it artificially to the high price
at which it had frequently been sold in
times of Charles I. and II. It was to take
place, therefore, till wheat was so high as forty-eight
shillings the quarter; that is, twenty
shillings, or 5-7ths dearer than Mr King had,
in that very year, estimated the grower's price
to be in times of moderate plenty. If his calculations
deserve any part of the reputation
which they have obtained very universally,
eight-and-forty shillings the quarter was a
price which, without some such expedient as
the bounty, could not at that time be expected,
except in years of extraordinary scarcity.
But the government of King William was not
then fully settled. It was in no condition to
refuse any thing to the country gentlemen,
from whom it was, at that very time, soliciting
the first establishment of the annual land-tax.
The value of silver, therefore, in proportion
to that of corn, had probably risen somewhat
before the end of the last century, and it
seems to have continued to do so during the
course of the greater part of the present,
though the necessary operation of the bounty
must have hindered that time from being so
sensible as it otherwise would have been in
the actual state of tillage.
In plentiful years, the bounty, by occasioning
an extraordinary exportation, necessarily
raises the price of corn above what it otherwise
would be in those years. To encourage
tillage, by keeping up the price of corn, even
in the most plentiful years, was the avowed
end of the institution.
In years of great scarcity, indeed, the bounty
has generally been suspended. It must,
however, have had some effect upon the prices
of many of these years. By the extraordinary
exportation which it occasions in years of
plenty, it must frequently hinder the plenty
of one year from compensating the scarcity
of another.
Both in years of plenty and in years of
scarcity, therefore, the bounty raises the price
of corn above what it naturally would be in
the actual state of tillage. If during the
sixty-four first years of the present century,
therefore, the average price has been lower
than during the sixty-four last years of the
last century, it must, in the same state of tillage,
have been much more so, had it not been
for this operation of the bounty.
But, without the bounty, it maybe said the
state of tillage would not have been the same.
What may have been the effects of this institution
upon the agriculture of the country, I
shall endeavour to explain hereafter, when I
come to treat particularly of bounties. I shall
only observe at present, that this rise in the
value of silver, in proportion to that of corn,
has not been peculiar to England. It has been
observed to have taken place in France during
the same period, and nearly in the same proportion,
too, by three very faithful, diligent,
and laborious collectors of the prices of corn,
Mr Dupré de St Maur, Mr Messance, and the
author of the Essay on the Police of Grain.
But in France, till 1764, the exportation of
grain was by law prohibited; and it is somewhat
difficult to suppose, that nearly the same
diminution of price which took place in one
country, notwithstanding this prohibition,
should, in another, be owing to the extraordinary
encouragement given to exportation.
It would be more proper, perhaps, to consider
this variation in the average money price
of corn as the effect rather of some gradual
rise in the real value of silver in the European
market, than of any fall in the real average
value of corn. Corn, it has already been observed,
is, at distant periods of time, a more
accurate measure of value than either silver
or, perhaps, any other commodity. When,
after the discovery of the abundant mines of
America, corn rose to three and four times
its former money price, this change was universally
ascribed, not to any rise in the real
value of corn, but to a fall in the real value
of silver. If, during the sixty-four first years
of the present century, therefore, the average
money price of corn has fallen somewhat below
what it had been during the greater part
of the last century, we should, in the same
manner, impute this change, not to any fall
in the real value of corn, but to some rise in
the real value of silver in the European market.