x PREFACE. 



the freedom of trade, which has characterized their 

 later activity. I do not mean that there was no de- 

 sire to adopt restrictions, that there were no attempts 

 to fix prices, both at home and at the ports. But the 

 machinery was not provided by which such limitations 

 could be operative. Some of the problems of political 

 economy therefore, I venture on stating, can be dis- 

 cerned and determined with greater ease from the 

 facts which I am able to bring before my reader, 

 fragmentary as they sometimes are, than they could 

 be out of the wider information of our own time. 

 Thus, for instance, the laws which govern prices will, 

 I think, be seen more clearly in these medieval records 

 than they could be in a modern Price Current. 



Lastly, as there were no regular means for supplying 

 deficiencies in the produce of the home market by 

 foreign importations ; the prices of necessaries, such 

 as corn, give no small insight into the course of the 

 seasons, and supply the best means for discovering a 

 cycle of seasons, if, as I do not dare to assert, such a 

 cycle can yet be found. Similarly, as salt was always, 

 it seems, manufactured by evaporation, the price of 

 this article, some obvious deductions being made, may 

 suggest the aggregate of solar heat and light in the 

 several years of the enquiry. I shall attempt in a 

 short time to publish one or two diagrams which will 

 illustrate this hypothesis, by exhibiting the rise and 

 fall in the price of certain articles. 



The age of dedications has passed away ; and even 

 where the form lingers it merely intends a compliment, 



