First Sort.—The first sort of rude produce,
of which the price rises in the progress of improvement,
is that which it is scarce in the power
of human industry to multiply at all. It consists
in those things which nature produces
only in certain quantities, and which being of
a very perishable nature, it is impossible to
accumulate together the produce of many different
seasons. Such are the greater part of
rare and singular birds and fishes, many different
sorts of game, almost all wild-fowl, all
birds of passage in particular, as well as many
other things. When wealth, and the luxury
which accompanies it, increase, the demand
for these is likely to increase with them, and
no effort of human industry may be able to
increase the supply much beyond what it was
before this increase of the demand. The quantity
of such commodities, therefore, remaining
the same, or nearly the same, while the competition
to purchase them is continually increasing,
their price may rise to any degree of
extravagance, and seems not to be limited by
any certain boundary. If woodcocks should
become so fashionable as to sell for twenty
guineas a-piece, no effort of human industry
could increase the number of those brought to
market, much beyond what it is at present.
The high price paid by the Romans, in the
time of their greatest grandeur, for rare birds
and fishes, may in this manner easily be accounted
for. These prices were not the effects
of the low value of silver in those times,
but of the high value of such rarities and curiosities
as human industry could not multiply
at pleasure. The real value of silver was
higher at Rome, for some time before, and
after the fall of the republic, than it is through
the greater part of Europe at present. Three
sestertii equal to about sixpence sterling, was
the price which the republic paid for the modius
or peck of the tithe wheat of Sicily.
This price, however, was probably below the
average market price, the obligation to deliver
their wheat at this rate being considered as a
tax upon the Sicilian farmers. When the
Romans, therefore, had occasion to order
more corn than the tithe of wheat amounted
to, they were bound by capitulation to pay for
the surplus at the rate of four sestertii, or
eightpence sterling the peck; and this had
probably been reckoned the moderate and reasonable,
that is, the ordinary or average contract
price of those times; it is equal to about
one-and-twenty shillings the quarter. Eight-and-twenty
shillings the quarter was, before
the late years of scarcity, the ordinary contract
price of English wheat, which in quality is inferior
to the Sicilian, and generally sells for a
lower price in the European market. The
value of silver, therefore, in those ancient
times, must have been to its value in the present,
as three to four inversely; that is, three
ounces of silver would then have purchased
the same quantity of labour and commodities
which four ounces will do at present. When
we read in Pliny, therefore, that Seius[22] bought
a white nightingale, as a present for the empress
Agrippina, at the price of six thousand
sestertii, equal to about fifty pounds of our
present money; and that Asinius Celer[23] purchased
a surmullet at the price of eight thousand
sestertii, equal to about sixty-six pounds
thirteen shillings and fourpence of our present
money; the extravagance of those prices,
how much soever it may surprise us, is apt,
notwithstanding, to appear to us about one
third less than it really was. Their real price,
the quantity of labour and subsistence which
was given away for them, was about one-third
more than their nominal price is apt to express
to us in the present times. Seius gave for the
nightingale the command of a quantity or labour
and subsistence, equal to what L.66 : 13 : 4d.
would purchase in the present times; and
Asinius Celer gave for a surmullet the command
of a quantity equal to what L.88 : 17 : 9d.
would purchase. What occasioned the
extravagance of those high prices was, not so
much the abundance of silver, as the abundance
of labour and subsistence, of which
those Romans had the disposal, beyond what
was necessary for their own use. The quantity
of silver, of which they had the disposal,
was a good deal less than what the command
of the same quantity of labour and subsistence
would have procured to them in the present
times.
Second sort.—The second sort of rude produce,
of which the price rises in the progress
of improvement, is that which human industry
can multiply in proportion to the demand.
It consists in those useful plants and animals,
which, in uncultivated countries, nature produces
with such profuse abundance, that they
are of little or no value, and which, as cultivation
advances, are therefore forced to give
place to some more profitable produce. During
a long period in the progress of improvement,
the quantity of these is continually diminishing,
while, at the same time, the demand
for them is continually increasing. Their
real value, therefore, the real quantity of labour
which they will purchase or command,
gradually rises, till at last it gets so high as
to render them as profitable a produce as any
thing else which human industry can raise
upon the most fertile and best cultivated land.
When it has got so high, it cannot well go
higher. If it did, more land and more industry
would soon be employed to increase
their quantity.
When the price of cattle, for example, rises
so high, that it is as profitable to cultivate land
in order to raise food for them as in order to
raise food for man, it cannot well go higher.
If it did, more corn land would soon be turned