340 VARIATIONS IN THE CHAP. xir. 



has not been overlooked, though it has been but 

 slightly noticed. We have good reason to know 

 that the system of agriculture was bad, as it 

 always necessarily myst be in the early progress 

 of civilization. With bad agriculture, the varia- 

 tion in the productiveness of different years 

 will be greater than in an improved state of 

 culture. The prices of corn, consequently, in 

 that step of low advancement, will be chiefly in- 

 fluenced by the fertility or non-fertility of a par- 

 ticular year or of a series of years. These prices 

 are therefore a less sure test by which to try 

 the value of the precious metals than the com- 

 modities, like wool, iron, coal, and some others, 

 which do not depend on the changes of the at- 

 mosphere in a climate, like that of Europe, sub- 

 ject to great vicissitudes. 



There is another reason why the price of corn 

 is an uncertain criterion. In ancient times in 

 England, wheat could not be considered as the 

 chief food of the inhabitants: very little of it 

 was used by the agricultural population, which 

 then composed nine-tenths of the inhabitants j 

 and among the people in the towns it was by no 

 means the universal or the principal food. Rye 

 and barley were the chief articles in consump- 

 tion; but among a people who were chiefly fed 

 by corn of their own growth, the quantity brought 

 to the markets in the towns would perhaps be 

 much less of those kinds of grain than of wheat. 





