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The ancient statutes of assize seem to have begun always with

determining what ought to be the price of bread and ale when the

price of wheat and barley were at the lowest; and to have

proceeded gradually to determine what it ought to be, according

as the prices of those two sorts of grain should gradually rise

above this lowest price. But the transcribers of those statutes

seem frequently to have thought it sufficient to copy the

regulation as far as the three or four first and lowest prices;

saving in this manner their own labour, and judging, I suppose,

that this was enough to show what proportion ought to be observed

in all higher prices.