PREFACE. vii 



and with the inevitable consequence, the elevation of 

 its trade or exchange price above its mint price. 



The second fact is the great exaltation of rents for 

 the occupation of arable land. It is by no means easy 

 to obtain evidence as to the history of agricultural 

 rents, for the corporate estates of the Oxford and 

 Cambridge Colleges are almost invariably let on terms, 

 with fines on renewal at intervals. But it is notorious 

 that such leases, even if the fines were duly interpreted, 

 never represented the rack-rent value of the occupancy, 

 that they were in fact beneficial leases, which the 

 lessee sub-let at a considerable profit to himself. It 

 is however clear that very early in the seventeenth 

 century the rent of arable land had generally increased 

 nine-fold over the old rent, and in many cases even 

 twelve-fold over customary rent at an earlier period. 

 From information which has been most obligingly 

 supplied me by Lord Leicester, it appears that no fresh 

 increase of rent took place during the whole century, 

 for the rental of the Coke estate is almost unchanged 

 from the days of the great Chief Justice in 1629 to 

 those of John Coke in 1706. This elevation of rent 

 is almost if not quite effected by exalted prices of 

 agricultural products. The other and far more powerful 

 cause of rent, economy in production, owing to improve- 

 ments in the art of agriculture, scarcely came into 

 existence at all during the seventeenth century. It was 

 in the eighteenth century that the art of agriculture 

 progressed by leaps and bounds, and this was due to the 

 fact that during the eighteenth century the great land- 



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