The high price of corn during these ten or
twelve years past, indeed, has occasioned a
suspicion that the real value of silver still continues
to fall in the European market. This
high price of corn, however, seems evidently
to have been the effect of the extraordinary
unfavourableness of the seasons, and ought,
therefore, to be regarded, not as a permanent,
but as a transitory and occasional event. The
seasons, for these ten or twelve years past,
have been unfavourable through the greater
part of Europe; and the disorders of Poland
have very much increased the scarcity in all
those countries, which, in dear years, used to
be supplied from that market. So long a
course of bad seasons, though not a very common
event, is by no means a singular one;
and whoever has inquired much into the history
of the prices of corn in former times,
will be at no loss to recollect several other
examples of the same kind. Ten years of extraordinary
scarcity, besides, are not more
wonderful than ten years of extraordinary
plenty. The low price of corn, from 1741 to
1750, both inclusive, may very well be set in
opposition to its high price during these last
eight or ten years. From 1741 to 1750, the
average price of the quarter of nine bushels of
the best wheat, at Windsor market, it appears
from the accounts of Eton College, was only
L.1 : 13 : 94⁄5, which is nearly 6s. 3d. below
the average price of the sixty-four first years
of the present century. The average price of
the quarter of eight bushels of middle wheat
comes out, according to this account, to have
been, during these ten years, only L.1 : 6 : 8.
Between 1741 and 1750, however, the
bounty must have hindered the price of corn
from falling so low in the home market as it
naturally would have done. During these
ten years, the quantity of all sorts of grain
exported, it appears from the custom-house
books, amounted to no less than 8,029,156
quarters, one bushel. The bounty paid for this
amounted to L.1,514,962 : 17 : 4½. In 1749,
accordingly, Mr Pelham, at that time prime
minister, observed to the house of commons,
that, for the three years preceding, a very extraordinary
sum had been paid as bounty for
the exportation of corn. He had good reason
to make this observation, and in the following
year he might have had still better.
In that single year, the bounty paid amounted
to no less than L.324,176 : 10 : 6.[18] It is unnecessary
to observe how much this forced exportation
must have raised the price of corn
above what it otherwise would have been in
the home market.
At the end of the accounts annexed to this
chapter the reader will find the particular account
of those ten years separated from the
rest. He will find there, too, the particular
account of the preceding ten years, of which
the average is likewise below, though not so
much below, the general average of the sixty-four
first years of the century. The year
1740, however, was a year of extraordinary
scarcity. These twenty years preceding 1750
may very well be set in opposition to the
twenty preceding 1770. As the former were
a good deal below the general average of the
century, notwithstanding the intervention of
one or two dear years; so the latter have been
a good deal above it, notwithstanding the intervention
of one or two cheap ones, of 1759, for
example. If the former have not been as much
below the general average as the latter have
been above it, we ought probably to impute it
to the bounty. The change has evidently been
too sudden to be ascribed to any change in
the value of silver, which is always slow and
gradual. The suddenness of the effect can be
accounted for only by a cause which can operate
suddenly, the accidental variations of the
seasons.
The money price of labour in Great Britain
has, indeed, risen during the course of the
present century. This, however, seems to be
the effect, not so much of any diminution in
the value of silver in the European market, as
of an increase in the demand for labour in
Great Britain, arising from the great, and almost
universal prosperity of the country. In
France, a country not altogether so prosperous,
the money price of labour has, since the
middle of the last century, been observed to
sink gradually with the average money price
of corn. Both in the last century and in the
present, the day wages of common labour are
there said to have been pretty uniformly about
the twentieth part of the average price of the
septier of wheat; a measure which contains a
little more than four Winchester bushels. In
Great Britain, the real recompence of labour,
it has already been shewn, the real quantities
of the necessaries and conveniencies of life
which are given to the labourer, has increased
considerably during the course of the present
century. The rise in its money price seems
to have been the effect, not of any diminution
of the value of silver in the general market of
Europe, but of a rise in the real price of labour,
in the particular market of Great Britain,
owing to the peculiarly happy circumstances
of the country.
For some time after the first discovery of
America, silver would continue to sell at its
former, or not much below its former price.
The profits of mining would for some time be
very great, and much above their natural rate.
Those who imported that metal into Europe,
however, would soon find that the whole annual
importation could not be disposed of at
this high price. Silver would gradually exchange
for a smaller and a smaller quantity
of goods. Its price would sink gradually lower
and lower, till it fell to its natural price;
or to what was just sufficient to pay, according