An inquiry into the nature and causes of the wealth of

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Adam Smith

chase or command a smaller and a smaller quantity of labour, or

exchange for a smaller and a smaller quantity of corn, the princi-

pal part of the subsistence of the labourer.

The great market for silver is the commercial and civilized part

of the world.

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 same proportion, the value of silver would

gradually rise in proportion to that of corn. Any given quantity of

silver would exchange for a greater and a greater quantity of corn;

or, in other words, the average money price of corn would gradu-

ally become cheaper and cheaper.

If, on the contrary, the supply, by some accident, should in-

crease, for many years together, in a greater proportion than the

demand, that metal would gradually become cheaper and cheaper;

or, in other words, the average money price of corn would, in

spite of all improvements, gradually become dearer and dearer.

But if, on the other hand, the supply of that metal should in-

crease nearly in the same proportion as the demand, it would con-

tinue to purchase or exchange for nearly the same quantity of corn;

and the average money price of corn would, in spite of all im-

provements. continue very nearly the same.

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 four centuries preceding the present, if

we may judge by what has happened both in France and Great

Britain, each of those three different combinations seems to have

taken place in the European market, and nearly in the same order,

too, in which I have here set them down.

Digression concerning the Variations in the value of Silver dur-

ing the Course of the Four last Centuries.

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 four ounces of silver, Tower weight, equal to

about twenty shillings of our present money. From this price it

seems to have fallen gradually to two ounces of silver, equal to

about ten shillings of our present money, the price at which we

find it estimated in the beginning of the sixteenth century, and at

which it seems to have continued to be estimated till about 1570.

In 1350, being the 25th of Edward III. was enacted what is

called the Statute of Labourers. In the preamble, it complains much

of the insolence of servants, who endeavoured to raise their wages

upon their masters. It therefore ordains, that all servants and

labourers should, for the future, be contented with the same wages

and liveries (liveries in those times signified not only clothes, but

provisions) which they had been accustomed to receive in the 20th

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152

The Wealth of Nations

year of the king, and the four preceding years; that, upon this

account, their livery-wheat should nowhere be estimated higher

than tenpence a-bushel, and that it should always be in the option

of the master to deliver them either the wheat or the money.

Tenpence: a-bushel, therefore, had, in the 25th of Edward III.

been reckoned a very moderate price of wheat, since it required a

particular statute to oblige servants to accept of it in exchange for

their usual livery of provisions; and it had been reckoned a reason-

able price ten years before that, or in the 16th year of the king, the

term to which the statute refers. But in the 16th year of Edward

III. tenpence contained about half an ounce of silver, Tower weight,

and was nearly equal to half-a-crown of our present money. Four

ounces of silver, Tower weight, therefore, equal to six shillings and

eightpence of the money of those times, and to near twenty shil-

lings of that of the present, must have been reckoned a moderate

price for the quarter of eight bushels.

This statute is surely a better evidence of what was reckoned, in

those times, a moderate price of grain, than the prices of some

particular years, which have generally been recorded by historians

and other writers, on account of their extraordinary dearness or

cheapness, and from which, therefore, it is difficult to form any

judgment concerning what may have been the ordinary price. There

are, besides, other reasons for believing that, in the beginning of

the fourteenth century, and for some time before, the common

price of wheat was not less than four ounces of silver the quarter,

and that of other grain in proportion.

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 the bill of fare, but the prices of many

particulars. In that feast were consumed, 1st, fifty-three quarters

of wheat, which cost nineteen pounds, or seven shillings, and

twopence a-quarter, equal to about one-and-twenty shillings and

sixpence of our present money; 2dly, fifty-eight quarters of malt,

which cost seventeen pounds ten shillings, or six shillings a-quar-

ter, equal to about eighteen shillings of our present money; 3dly,

twenty quarters of oats, which cost four pounds, or four shillings

a-quarter, equal to about twelve shillings of our present money.

The prices of malt and oats seem here to lie higher than their

ordinary proportion to the price of wheat.

These prices are not recorded, on account of their extraordinary

dearness or cheapness, but are mentioned accidentally, as the prices

actually paid for large quantities of grain consumed at a feast,

which was famous for its magnificence.

In 1262, being the 51st of Henry III. was revived an ancient

statute, called the assize of bread and ale, which, the king says in

the preamble, had been made in the times of his progenitors, some

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