viii INTRODUCTION. 



at one time thought to be; but this particular assess- 

 ment is of interest inasmuch as it gives in some detail 

 the charges to be made for the conveyance of goods, and 

 the steps to be taken both for publishing the rates and 

 for seeing that they were properly observed. The penalty 

 of imprisonment imposed in 1 706 shows, I suspect, that 

 there were many evasions of the law, and the notice 

 was reissued for the last time, as far as I can make out, 

 in 1 722. The eighth table is taken from John Mortimer's 

 Art of Husbandry, a most useful book for the student 

 of economic history in this period. Mortimer was a man 

 of business in London before he turned farmer, and he 

 appears to have been one of the first to import the 

 accurate and careful ways of the merchant into agri- 

 culture. As he farmed in Essex the prices are of course 

 those of the South of England. Laurence's Duty and 

 Office of a Land Steward, the book from which the ninth 

 table is taken, is difficult to get, but it is full of useful 

 information. The prices quoted are, I believe, York- 

 shire. The eleventh table has been prepared with 

 considerable trouble from the works of Arthur Young. 

 That vigorous and fluent writer in the course of his 

 tours procured many prices of labour, which he recorded 

 from time to time systematically and neatly. He even 

 went so far as to bring the prices together at the end 

 of each of his tours, and to make elaborate and valuable 

 calculations as to the amount of real wages received by 

 the farm hands. But apart from the fact that these 

 were only made on each occasion over a certain part of 

 the kingdom, the tables he prepared are marred by the 

 form in which they were cast, for the places were 

 arranged according to their distance from London. 

 The present list, which, so far as I know, is not to be 



