CHAP. XIV. IN THE DARK AGES. 36l 



in three hundred and sixty of the gold and silver 

 is annually consumed by wear, and that in the year 

 800 the stock of those metals had been reduced, 

 from what it was in the time of Augustus, to 

 about thirty-five or thirty-six millions, it will 

 follow that a yearly addition of so small an 

 amount as one hundred thousand pounds from 

 the mines would be a supply fully adequate to re- 

 place such consumption. 



As far as a judgment can be formed from the 

 few facts that are discoverable, we should be 

 disposed to conclude the whole quantity yielded 

 by the mines during the period would, on a 

 yearly average, amount to one hundred thousand 

 pounds, but that the later years were some- 

 what more productive than the earlier. We are 

 rather inclined to this opinion by the rise of a 

 few common articles as noticed by Ruding, 

 (vol. i. p. 193 and 194), which appear to have 

 increased in money price between 1150 and 1450, 

 at the rate of nearly one hundred per cent. 



There seems thus no reason to suppose that 

 the additional quantity of gold and silver brought 

 into circulation between the years 800 and 

 1500 was much, if any, more than was re- 

 quired to keep the stock of the last of those 

 years to as high a standard as it had reached in 

 the first of them ; and we judge that the 

 quantity must have remained nearly the same 

 from the prices of commodities, when valued by 



