CONTRASTED AVERAGES OF PRICES. GRAIN. 



787 



remunerated. This is the most important relation which I 

 can exhibit, but the facts, and I trust the inferences, will not be 

 exhausted by this first comparison. 



But in order to make this contrast complete, it will be 

 necessary to take a third factor. This will be found in the 

 price of these articles during the forty-two years 1541-1582, 

 inclusive, on which I commented in my fourth volume (pp. 

 714-737), and contrasted with the facts of the previous 

 hundred and forty years. As before, I take each successive 

 set of averages at unity, and then indicate the rise, calculated 

 to four places of decimals, in the two successive products. 

 The three averages then which I take are from 1541 to 1582, 

 from 1583 to 1642, and from 1643 to 1702. 



s. d. 



Wheat 13 10$ 



Barley 8 5 | 



Malt 10 5 



Oats 5 5$ 



Oatmeal 20 io| 



These figures and deductions prove that, as far as the 

 principal kinds of grain are concerned, i.e. all those which 

 were habitually used as human food in the sixteenth and 

 seventeenth centuries, the principal elevation in price was 

 effected in the first period from 1583 to 1642, the price of 

 grain being more than doubled within sixty years. The 

 average annual coinage of Elizabeth's reign was 125,311 in 

 both metals, of James's 241,216 (supra, p. 126). The exi- 

 gencies of trade with the East must have absorbed a certain 

 portion of this extra coinage, and though Mun was probably 

 right in his contention that the fact of this trade would 

 inevitably lead to an importation of the precious metals, 

 which would be largely in excess of the exportation, this 

 very excess would to a large extent figure in the issues of the 

 Mint '. 



1 I assume, of course, that Ruding's figures are accurate. It has been said that 

 he was the real author of Lord Liverpool's 'Coins of the Realm.' 



3 E 2 



