INTRODUCTION. xiii 



stock for each day. The quotations for the first three 

 months are extracted mainly from the Morning Chronicle, 

 supplemented by the Public Advertiser. For the rest of 

 the year the Public Advertiser was used as far as possible, and 

 The Diary or Wood/all's Recorder. In this year, however, 

 the latter paper appears to have dropped out of existence 

 through the retirement of Woodfall. The blanks, and 

 these were numerous towards the end of the year, were 

 filled in by extracts from the Morning Chronicle and the 

 Morning Herald. 



I should mention that some of the entries for 1777, 1778, and 

 all of 1779 to 1789, part of 1791, and all 1792 and 1793, 

 were extracted for me by Mr. Richard F. Taylor. 



It will be noticed that in many cases two papers have 

 been used. This is due to the fact that most of the 

 papers of this period preserved in the British Museum 

 were not daily papers, but appeared only three times 

 a week. The papers that appeared oftener either did 

 not record the prices of the stocks, or they are provincial 

 papers, and therefore not to be trusted in such a case 

 for information first hand, or they are represented by 

 a few scattered numbers only. The papers that passed 

 under the name of Lloyd on the other hand were 

 definitely commercial papers, endeavouring to give full 

 and accurate information on such subjects. They labour, 

 however, under this disadvantage, that they are mostly 

 evening papers, and apparently give the prices only 

 up to one o'clock. It is possible therefore that occasion- 

 ally further fractional changes may have taken place 

 which are not recorded. Had any serious change taken 

 place, I am confident the fact would have been noticed 

 in the next issue of the paper. A study of the figures, 

 moreover, will show that sometimes very obvious and 

 startling misprints occur, and it has been necessary often 

 to question the accuracy of some of the statements. At 



