784 ON PRICES GENERALLY BETWEEN 1583 AND 1702. 



growth of population outruns the growth of agricultural skill, 

 that which under more satisfactory relations would be stint, 

 becomes under such conditions famine. Some caution must 

 therefore be used in drawing inferences from the price of 

 wheat, for the exaltation may be due to causes other than a 

 fall in the value of money. 



The policy of the pensionary parliament, selfish and mer- 

 ciless as it was in its corn law, in its law of parochial settlement, 

 and in its Irish legislation, was not as uniformly effectual as was 

 hoped. With the exception of three years, 1673, 1674 and 

 1678, prices of wheat were low from 1664 to 1690, possibly be- 

 cause the seasons were propitious, possibly because there was 

 a real improvement in agriculture. The bounty system of 

 the Revolution was in principle quite as indefensible as the 

 corn law of the Restoration ; but it tended to defeat its own 

 ends by extending the area of cultivation, and I have little 

 doubt that much of the plenty which characterised the first 

 half of the eighteenth century was due to the bounty on ex- 

 ported corn, and to gambling for the bounty. 



I mention these particulars by way of preface to the facts 

 which I am about to lay before my reader, in order to indicate 

 that some judgement is needed in the interpretation of what 

 seems to be the most obvious and conclusive of figures. 

 Whenever prices are high, currency critics are apt to instantly 

 appeal to the fact, as they call it. that the price of gold, or 

 whatever else is in circulation, has fallen ; when prices fall, 

 they resort with equal confidence to the allegation that gold 

 has become dear, and rarely take into consideration how 

 actively all the efforts of the money markets are engaged in 

 reducing to the uttermost the specie on which all business is 

 based, of promoting the efficiency of that which they retain, 

 and of keeping up prices. I do not here enter on the question 

 which has been debated with so much warmth and with such 

 confidence at the present time, the causes which have induced 

 the marked prevalence of low prices for the last eight or ten 

 years, but I am persuaded that the cheapness of freight has 



