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The price of corn, though at all times liable to variation varies

most in those turbulent and disorderly societies, in which the

interruption of all commerce and communication hinders the plenty

of one part of the country from relieving the scarcity of

another. In the disorderly state of England under the

Plantagenets, who governed it from about the middle of the

twelfth till towards the end of the fifteenth century, one

district might be in plenty, while another, at no great distance,

by having its crop destroyed, either by some accident of the

seasons, or by the incursion of some neighbouring baron, might be

suffering all the horrors of a famine; and yet if the lands of

some hostile lord were interposed between them, the one might not

be able to give the least assistance to the other.