Segar.— The Flood of Gold. 123 



one-twelfth of those now ruling. 



When Henry VI. was held a prisoner by Edward IV. in 

 1470 it was only thought necessary to allow him, for the 

 subsistence of himself and his suite of ten persons, the ap- 

 parently meagre sum of £3 10s. per week. Many other such 

 incidents must have astonished us in our early reading of 

 history, the biblical penny in particular appearing to have a 

 somewhat miraculous purchasing-power. 



Evidently, then, the value, or purchasing-power, of money 

 is nothing innate in the metals or coins which constitute the 

 currency, but may vary considerably, and, as we shall see 

 presently, sometimes rapidly. Some of these variations in 

 modern times have been carefully estimated. Between 1570 

 and 1640 there was a remarkably sudden and extensive de- 

 cline in the purchasing-power of money ; this will be con- 

 sidered again later on. Coming to more recent times, the 

 value of gold, according to the estimate of Professor Jevons, 

 fell 46 per cent, between the years 1789 and 1809 ; and from 

 1809 to 1849 it rose again no less than 145 per cent., while 

 between 1849 and 1874 it fell again at least 20 per cent. 



Prices, then, may not only fluctuate from day to day, week 

 to week, and year to year through changes in the conditions 

 of business, fluctuations with which we are all familiar, but 

 may in the course of years reach altogether different levels. 

 And this is true not only of the prices of any one commoditv, 

 but of the prices of commodities in general, or the average 

 level of prices. For instance, it may be noticed that in tne 

 list of provisions given above the relative differences in prices 

 of the various articles as compared with those of the present 

 day are very small compared with the differences in the prices 

 of any one article then and now It would appear, then, that 

 the extraordinarily small prices in the list were due not to a 



