736 ON PRICES GENERALLY BETWEEN 1401 AND 1582. 



of instances illustrating the tendency of men to acquiesce in 

 over-issues of paper, or in the coinage of an over-valued 

 metal, because such practices give the appearance of briskness 

 to trade, of good prices, and higher profits. The appearance 

 is delusive indeed, and sooner or later is followed by reaction 

 and loss, in which the working classes are the greatest sufferers. 



But the issue of base money is instantly and irremediably 

 mischievous. It affects all, except those who can interpret the 

 fraud at once, and forthwith turning the base coin into an 

 article of traffic, can trade on the knowledge or skill which 

 they have acquired. To the poor, to all who live by wages or 

 fixed salaries, it is instantly ruinous, and, as we have seen, the 

 effect of these sixteen years of base money in England can be 

 traced in the history of labour and wages from that period to 

 the present time. 



I have still to refer to the gradual and steady exaltation of the 

 price of provisions during the last half of Henry the Eighth's 

 reign, and before the issue of the base money. That a rise in 

 such money values was noticed at the time is certain, as I have 

 observed above, p. 1 1 1 . Such a phenomenon ought to have 

 stayed Henry's hand when he meditated and effected his great 

 fraud on the English people. The following will serve to 

 illustrate the fact. 



The contrast is the more marked, because all prices had been 

 exceptionally low during the previous forty years, the rate of 

 the first decade in the above table being in excess of that 

 which ruled in the previous decade of years. 



I account for the rise by the inference that money was 



