402 ARTICLES EMPLOYED IN AGRICULTURE. 



Among the records which have been preserved, perhaps by 

 accident, in New College muniment room, are collections of 

 bills, presented by artisans in the latter part of the fifteenth 

 century, for repairs executed on the various tenements belonging 

 to New College, in Oxford and elsewhere. Similar documents 

 exist in other Colleges. These are evidence, not only of the 

 general spread of education among the working classes, who 

 knew how to draw up and present accounts, but of the fact 

 that employments which, a century before, were with rare excep- 

 tions of labour only, had become employments of labour and 

 capital, in which the craftsman found materials as well as work. 

 In some directions indeed, and for a long time afterwards, em- 

 ployers, especially in building, found materials and even tools, 

 but in others, and these not the least significant in the eco- 

 nomy of society, the artisan had taken decided steps towards 

 independence. 



The reader will remember that considerable fluctuations in 

 price recorded in articles like those dealt with in the present 

 chapter are due either to temporary causes, such as inclement 

 seasons, wet, and deficient solar heat, in an article like salt, 

 and in some degree in lime ; to interruptions in trade, casual 

 or permanent, and to the restoration of such commercial trans- 

 actions, in articles which were almost entirely of foreign origin, 

 such as tar, or extensively imported as iron was ; or to a rise 

 or fall in the value of the precious metals, as the representatives 

 of money values. But there was no opportunity for what we 

 should call speculative purchases, with a view to a control of 

 the market. The vendor in those times could not measure and 

 anticipate the wants of the purchaser, for as far as industry and 

 commerce were concerned, in relation to ordinary demand, 

 producers and dealers were not stimulated, as yet, to extraor- 

 dinary exertions, or subject to such fluctuations in price as arise 

 from interpretations on a large scale of actual supply and pos- 

 sible demand. The record of prices is therefore a record of 

 economical values. 



In the subjoined tables, Table I is the annual averages 



