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social consequences. The revenues of the Universities of Oxford 
and Cambridge, and of the Colleges of Eton and Winchester, arising 
principally from land, were anciently payable in money. The Lord 
Treasurer Burleigh, and other far-seeing men of that day, became 
sensible of the great diminution of the value of money which was 
about to be the consequence of the increased American supplies of 
silver, and to elude the effect of the impending depreciation, they 
had an act of Parliament passed, by which it was enacted, that in 
all future leases to be granted by the several colleges, one third part 
at least of the old rent should be reserved in corn, and should be con- 
verted into money each year, according to the average market-prices 
of grain. The money arising from this corn-rent, although originally 
but a third of the whole, is now worth double the other two thirds ; 
and thus, by the wise precautions and foresight of the great men of 
that time, were these venerable seats of learning prevented from 
falling into comparative poverty and decay. 
The question which now presents itself for solution is this : Are 
the recent discoveries of gold (now the standard of our money), and 
the vast accessions now making to the previous stock of that metal, 
producing at present, or are they likely to produce hereafter, effects 
similar in kind, although, it may be, inferior in degree, to the effects 
produced in the sixteenth century by the discovery of the American 
mines, and the great subsequent fall in the cost of producing silver? 
Or, on the contrary, are the situation of the world, and the circum- 
stances of society, now so totally different as to place us altogether 
beyond the danger of any such revolution in the relations of property 
as our ancestors experienced in the days of the Tudors \ 
This subject gave rise to much controversy in 1852, after the 
first accounts of the Australian discoveries had reached this country. 
On reviewing the arguments on both sides (of which the author gave 
a summary), many of those whose attention had been previously 
directed to the subject, both here and on the Continent, felt them- 
selves constrained to conclude that the preponderance of probability 
(to say the least of it) was on the side of those who maintained the 
likelihood of an ultimate general rise of wages and prices in Europe. 
Of course, at that early period, all reasonings with reference to 
the future were, and could only be, conjectural. But judging from 
the past, and the effects formerly produced by the American sup- 
plies of silver, it was concluded that if the Australian and Cali- 
