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The usual and natural proportion, for example, between the rent and profit of wine, and those of corn and pasture, must be understood to take place…

In Europe, corn is the principal produce of land, which serves immediately for human food. Except in particular situations, therefore, the rent of…

Food is, in this manner, not only the original source of rent, but every other part of the produce of land which afterwards affords rent, derives…

Those other parts of the produce of land, however, which afterwards afford rent, do not afford it always. Even in improved and cultivated countries,…

There are some, of which the produce is barely sufficient to pay the labour, and replace, together with its ordinary profits, the stock employed in…

The lowest price at which coals can be sold for any considerable time, is, like that of all other commodities, the price which is barely sufficient…

Rent, even where coals afford one, has generally a smaller share in their price than in that of most other parts of the rude produce of land. The…

The value of a coal mine to the proprietor, frequently depends as much upon its situation as upon its fertility. That of a metallic mine depends more…

The lowest price at which the precious metals can be sold, or the smallest quantity of other goods for which they can be exchanged, during any…

The demand for the precious stones arises altogether from their beauty. They are of no use but as ornaments; and the merit of their beauty is greatly…

It is otherwise in estates above ground. The value, both of their produce and of their rent, is in proportion to their absolute, and not to their…

If, by the general progress of improvement, the demand of this market should increase, while, at the same time, the supply did not increase in the…

If, on the contrary, the supply, by some accident, should increase, for many years together, in a greater proportion than the demand, that metal…

But if, on the other hand, the supply of that metal should increase nearly in the same proportion as the demand, it would continue to purchase or…

These three seem to exhaust all the possible combinations of events which can happen in the progress of improvement; and during the course of the…

First Period.—In 1350, and for some time before, the average price of the quarter of wheat in England seems not to have been estimated lower than…

In 1309, Ralph de Born, prior of St Augustine’s, Canterbury, gave a feast upon his installation-day, of which William Thorn has preserved, not only…

From these different facts, therefore, we seem to have some reason to conclude that, about the middle of the fourteenth century, and for a…

From about the middle of the fourteenth to the beginning of the sixteenth century, what was reckoned the reasonable and moderate, that is, the…

In the household book of Henry, the fifth earl of Northumberland, drawn up in 1512 there are two different estimations of wheat. In one of them it is…

From the 25th of Edward III. to the beginning of the reign of Elizabeth, during the space of more than two hundred years, six shillings and…

Thus, in 1436, it was enacted, that wheat might be exported without a licence when the price was so low as six shillings and eightpence: and in 1463,…

It has been the opinion, however, of the greater part of those who have written upon the prices of commodities in ancient times, that, from the…

Thus, in the assize of bread and ale, of the 51st of Henry III. the price of bread was regulated according to the different prices of wheat, from one…

Such slight observations, however, upon the prices either of corn or of other commodities, would not probably have misled so many intelligent authors…

The quantity of the precious metals may increase in any country from two different causes; either, first, from the increased abundance of the mines…

When more abundant mines are discovered, a greater quantity of the precious metals is brought to market; and the quantity of the necessaries and…

The difference between the money price of labour in China and in Europe, is still greater than that between the money price of subsistence; because…

Whatever, therefore, may have been the increase in the quantity of the precious metals, which, during the period between the middle of the fourteenth…

From about 1570 to about 1640, during a period of about seventy years, the variation in the proportion between the value of silver and that of corn…

The discovery of the abundant mines of America seems to have been the sole cause of this diminution in the value of silver, in proportion to that…

From 1595 to 1620, both inclusive, the average price of the quarter of nine bushels of the best wheat, at Windsor market, appears, from the…

From 1621 to 1636, both inclusive, the average price of the same measure of the best wheat, at the same market, appears, from the same accounts, to…

From 1637 to 1700, both inclusive, being the sixty-four last years of the last century the average price of the quarter of nine bushels of the best…

The tax of the king of Spain was reduced to a fifth of the registered silver in 1504 {Solorzano, vol, ii.}, one-and-forty years before 1545, the date…

The price of silver in the European market might, perhaps, have fallen still lower, and it might have become necessary either to reduce the tax…

The quantity of brass and iron annually brought from the mine to the market, is out of all proportion greater than that of gold and silver. We do not…

The great quantities of silver carried annually from Europe to India, have, in some of the English settlements, gradually reduced the value of that…

But the ordinary proportion between the respective values of two commodities is not necessarily the same as that between the quantities of them which…

The increase of the wealth of Europe, and the popular notion, that as the quantity of the precious metals naturally increases with the increase of…

That that increase in the quantity of the precious metals, which arises in any country from the increase of wealth, has no tendency to diminish their…

If you except corn, and such other vegetables as are raised altogether by human industry, that all other sorts of rude produce, cattle, poultry, game…

Though it is late, therefore, in the progress of improvement, before cattle can bring such a price as to render it profitable to cultivate land for…

Between that period in the progress of improvement, which brings to its height the price of so necessary an article as cattle, and that which…

This rise, too, in the nominal or money price of all those different sorts of rude produce, has been the effect, not of any degradation in the…

Third Sort.—The third and last sort of rude produce, of which the price naturally rises in the progress of improvement, is that in which the efficacy…

The same causes which, in the progress of improvement, gradually raise the price of butcher’s meat, should have the same effect, it may be thought,…

The market for butcher’s meat is almost everywhere confined to the country which produces it. Ireland, and some part of British America, indeed,…

The wool of Scotland fell very considerably in its price in consequence of the union with England, by which it was excluded from the great market…

Though the success of a particular day’s fishing may be a very uncertain matter, yet the local situation of the country being supposed, the general…

As the low value of gold and silver, therefore, is no proof of the wealth and flourishing state of the country where it takes place; so neither is…

As to the price of corn itself, it has, during the sixty-four first years of the present century, and before the late extraordinary course of bad…

The same quantity of silver, it may perhaps be said, will, in the present times, even according to the account which has been here given, purchase…

The same order of people are, by the same law, prohibited from wearing hose, of which the price should exceed fourteen-pence the pair, equal to about…

The consideration of these circumstances may, perhaps, in some measure, explain to us why the real price both of the coarse and of the fine…

That rise in the real price of those parts of the rude produce of land, which is first the effect of the extended improvement and cultivation, and…

That produce, after the rise in its real price, requires no more labour to collect it than before. A smaller proportion of it will, therefore, be…

All those improvements in the productive powers of labour, which tend directly to reduce the rent price of manufactures, tend indirectly to raise the…

Every increase in the real wealth of the society, every increase in the quantity of useful labour employed within it, tends indirectly to raise the…

The contrary circumstances, the neglect of cultivation and improvement, the fall in the real price of any part of the rude produce of land, the…