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But the reduction will appear much more sensible and undeniable,

if we compare the price of this manufacture in the present times

with what it was in a much remoter period, towards the end of the

fifteenth century, when the labour was probably much less

subdivided, and the machinery employed much more imperfect, than

it is at present.

In 1487, being the 4th of Henry VII., it was enacted, that

"whosoever shall sell by retail a broad yard of the finest

scarlet grained, or of other grained cloth of the finest making,

above sixteen shillings, shall forfeit forty shillings for every

yard so sold." Sixteen shillings, therefore, containing about the

same quantity of silver as four-and-twenty shillings of our

present money, was, at that time, reckoned not an unreasonable

price for a yard of the finest cloth; and as this is a sumptuary

law, such cloth, it is probable, had usually been sold somewhat

dearer. A guinea may be reckoned the highest price in the present

times. Even though the quality of the cloths, therefore, should

be supposed equal, and that of the present times is most probably

much superior, yet, even upon this supposition, the money price

of the finest cloth appears to have been considerably reduced

since the end of the fifteenth century. But its real price has

been much more reduced.