406 ON THE PRICES OF FARM PRODUCE. 



stock was caused by mortality affecting animals to a very 

 serious extent. With this general rise, however., we find no 

 enhancement, but a low rate in the price of produce, for the 

 demand was diminished. We have seen already that the price 

 of wool was on the whole considerably reduced in the latter 

 part of the fourteenth century, and that a similar phenomenon 

 is to be recognised in the price of hides. We now see that 

 analogous though not identical consequences can be discerned 

 in the price of cheese, the price in the last fifty years of the 

 period being a very little above the average b. In all these 

 cases the same cause was operative. So large a number of 

 persons had perished by the pestilence, not only in England 

 but in foreign countries, that the market for exports was 

 exceedingly languid, and the home consumption was, if not 

 seriously diminished in the aggregate, distributed among a 

 much less number of purchasers. In other words, the condition 

 of the surviving members among the labouring classes had 

 materially improved. Their wages, as we have already seen, 

 notwithstanding the efforts made to check the rise, had greatly 

 increased ; and while the price of the primary necessaries of life 

 had not been greatly enhanced, that of the secondary necessaries 

 was so little affected, that these articles were brought more 

 and more freely within the reach of those who, as we may 

 believe, had in the time preceding that terrible calamity which 

 reduced the numbers of the nation so greatly, been debarred 

 from the constant use of such conveniences. 



It does not indeed appear that the agriculturist was a loser, 

 as far as the price of this produce went, by the loss in the 

 number of those who, previously to an important economical 

 change, constituted his consumers. As a rule, an increase of 

 supply or a diminution of demand lowers prices, but it does 

 so only when the consumption of the article supplied has 



b It is to be observed that the low price of the decade 1341-1350 depresses the 

 general average by rather more than i\d. the wey, but that if this period were excluded, 

 the average of 1351-1400, viz. los. ojrf., would be actually lower than this general 

 average. 



