EARLY FLUCTUATIONS IN PRICE. 727 



But it is well known that when labour is hired, such incidents 

 as dear times, and even extraordinary demand, do not raise 

 wages as they raise rents and profits, this last fact in the case 

 being the only result which the advocates of Protection seem 

 able to recognise. 



It is now my business to deal with prices in so far as they 

 are seen to fluctuate in the two portions of the period as I have 

 divided it. I must allow, and allow for the last time, that I 

 might possibly have found a dividing line which would have 

 been more suggestive in special cases than that which I have 

 taken, in fixing the older period of money values as concluding 

 with 1540, and the new departure in 1541. But the division 

 has been found convenient in all cases but one, that of Eastern 

 produce, and it has at least this advantage, that it does not 

 exaggerate the discrepancy between the price of necessaries and 

 the wages of labour, while it assists the theory, that the prime 

 cause of the discrepancy was the issue of base money, and the 

 second the sudden shift in the distribution of property which 

 was effected by the dissolution of the monastic bodies, and 

 by the lavish dissipation of their treasures, followed by the 

 confiscation of the guild estates. 



Prices are generally high during the first ten or twelve years 

 of the fifteenth century. I am not referring particularly to those 

 which, like the prices of corn and salt, depend on what I have 

 ventured on calling solar fertility, and which have been, as far 

 as prices of corn are concerned, discussed in the comments 

 which I have made on the harvest of each year. The same fact 

 applies to wool, which is dear during the first decade, and on- 

 wards to 1414. Cattle and sheep are similarly dear during this 

 space of time, as are also salt, lime, and iron. The same may 

 be said of certain materials, as nails, which are frequently as 

 dear at the beginning of the fifteenth century as they are at the 

 end of the whole period, and sometimes even dearer. 



The most remarkable fact, however, is the period of general 

 low prices which prevails in all products other than those 

 which are merely agricultural from 1490 onwards, for thirty, 



