2l6 AVERAGES OF PRICES. 



the continuity with which the character of its produce was 

 maintained, give us but a vague average as to general 

 values. 



III. The comparative scantiness of information as to 

 farmer's produce in the hands of the agriculturist is true also 

 of farm labour properly so called. I cannot as in the previous 

 volumes separate the thresher's labour by the five great districts 

 of England, for I cannot give anything like continuous prices 

 of labour for any district or for the whole of England. There 

 is however enough information for purposes of comparison. On 

 the other hand the facts are continuous and copious for skilled 

 and unskilled labour, and the reader will have no difficulty in 

 following the change which the general alteration of money 

 values induced on the wages of labour, and will be able to see 

 how far the statutes of labourers' wages were operative. The 

 facts were so copious that I was obliged to select ; but I have 

 thought that it was important to give full information as to 

 wages paid to such labourers as were employed on royal works. 

 Here, again, I have given a table of maximum rates in the 

 most important kinds of labour, and am able to show a pretty 

 constant record of the price of labour in London. 



IV. In almost all other articles the information supplied is 

 far more copious than it was in the preceding volumes. Salt 

 and tar are exceptions. I have been unable to give an 

 absolutely continuous price of salt, though generally, as might 

 be expected, the purchases of this article are in larger quanti- 

 ties than in the previous accounts. But while salt was bought 

 at nearly every farm house as long as the old system prevailed, 

 it does not come into the expenses of the later bailiff or 

 collector, and in the accounts of the consumer is often omitted, 

 or stated in a gross sum with other purchases. But the 

 observations which I made as to the extent to which the cost 

 of carriage enters into the price of salt are confirmed by the 

 later entries. The indirect inferences gathered from the price 

 of salt may be collected from those of hay and straw, which 

 are supplied in great abundance in the present volumes, as 



