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Six shillings and eightpence was then, and long afterwards,

reckoned the average price of a quarter of wheat. Sixteen

shillings, therefore, was the price of two quarters and more than

three bushels of wheat. Valuing a quarter of wheat in the present

times at eight-and-twenty shillings, the real price of a yard of

fine cloth must, in those times, have been equal to at least

three pounds six shillings and sixpence of our present money. The

man who bought it must have parted with the command of a quantity

of labour and subsistence equal to what that sum would purchase

in the present times.

The reduction in the real price of the coarse manufacture, though

considerable, has not been so great as in that of the fine.