CHAP. XXX. 



OF COMMODITIES. 375 



tional power given to it. It is much more difficult 

 to calculate the additional power than it is to esti- 

 mate the decline in quantity. 



It was intended to have been shown from the 

 prices of a numerous list of articles in the year 

 1810, and of the same in 1830, what had been the 

 degree of decline on the metallic value of com- 

 modities; but it was found impossible to frame 

 any list in which the alteration of prices had not 

 evidently been affected by other causes than the 

 diminished quantity of the circulating medium. 

 Thus, the article of corn, which is of the greatest 

 amount, has been subject to such restrictions that 

 it is impossible to determine what its price 

 would have been in any country at any time, if a 

 perfectly free trade in it had been allowed. We 

 cannot calculate the influence of those restrictions 

 more than we can the effect of the calamitous 

 harvest of 1816, or of the return to general peace 

 in 1815. Other commodities, as iron, may have 

 had their relative value to gold and silver dis- 

 turbed by improvements in mechanical means of 

 dispensing with human or other animal labour. 

 Some articles, as lead, may have had their re- 

 lations affected by the opening of more productive 

 mines. Monopolies, such as exist in some branches 

 of the trade in coal, and as during the war 

 operated on alum, may tend to deviations from 

 the natural price of the articles. Speculations 

 also may have a great temporary effect, as has 



