84 ADVANCE OF PRICES 



CHAP. XIX. 



This account is given in livres, sols, and deniers, 

 whose proportions to each other are the same as 

 our pounds, shillings, and pence. In France, as 

 in England, the process of diminishing the weight 

 of the livre, which in the time of Charlemagne 

 had been a pound weight of silver, had been con- 

 stantly going on from 768 to 17^0, when it 

 reached its present or rather its late value of 

 about ten-pence halfpenny sterling. 



According to the table, as calculated in the 

 " Traite des Monnoies et de la Jurisdiction de 

 la Cour des Monnoies," published by Bazinghen, 

 1764, vol. i. p. 642, it is shown that the value of 

 the livre, as estimated by the pure silver it con- 

 tained, was from 1483 to 1497 equal to four livres 

 ten sols of the existing livre, that from 1497 to 

 1514 it was equal to three livres nineteen sols, and 

 that from 1573 to 1589 it was only worth two 

 livres twelve sols. The preceding table exhibits an 

 advance of prices nearly amounting to seven hun- 

 dred per cent. ; but when the discrepancies arising 

 from the variations in the value of the coin are 

 taken into the calculation, that enormous advance 

 will be reduced down to a rate of increase more 

 consonant to that which appears to have taken 

 place in England at the same time. The advance, 

 instead of being from eight pounds ten shillings 

 and four-pence to sixty-two pounds fifteen shil- 

 lings and four-pence, will be only from thirty-three 

 pounds nine shillings and nine-pence to one him- 



