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The change has evidently been too sudden to be ascribed to any

change in the value of silver, which is always slow and gradual.

The suddenness of the effect can be accounted for only by a cause

which can operate suddenly, the accidental variations of the

seasons.

The money price of labour in Great Britain has, indeed, risen

during the course of the present century. This, however, seems to

be the effect, not so much of any diminution in the value of

silver in the European market, as of an increase in the demand

for labour in Great Britain, arising from the great, and almost

universal prosperity of the country. In France, a country not

altogether so prosperous, the money price of labour has, since

the middle of the last century, been observed to sink gradually

with the average money price of corn. Both in the last century

and in the present, the day wages of common labour are there said

to have been pretty uniformly about the twentieth part of the

average price of the septier of wheat; a measure which contains a

little more than four Winchester bushels.