Strona 486 z 2651

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

increase nearly in the same proportion as the demand, it would

continue to purchase or exchange for nearly the same quantity of

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

improvements. 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

during the Course of the Four last Centuries._