صفحة 533 من 2651

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 have been £ 2:10s.; from which, making the like

deductions as in the foregoing case, the average price of the

quarter of eight bushels of middle wheat comes out to have been £

1:19:6, or about seven ounces and two-thirds of an ounce of

silver.

Third Period.-Between 1630 and 1640, or about 1636, the effect of

the discovery of the mines of America, in reducing the value of

silver, appears to have been completed, and the value of that

metal seems never to have sunk lower in proportion to that of

corn than it was about that time. It seems to have risen somewhat

in the course of the present century, and it had probably begun

to do so, even some time before the end of the last.