three nummi the modius, that is three pence three farthings the peck. According to Pliny, the coarsest bread was made of flour worth forty ases, equal to fifty cents a peck; of wheaten bread fortyeight ases; and the finest of all eighty ases, or one hundred and thirteen cents; so that about the time of Pliny, corn was considerably dearer in Rome than it is commonly at London.

The article which stands next to bread corn among the necessaries of life is clothing. Common wearing cloaths, made of wool, such as were always worn at Rome, we should not think very dear. For Cato the elder never wore a suit worth above one hundred drachms, equal to three pounds four shillings and seven pence; and we must consider that the Roman cloaths were not made close, but large and loose, and therefore would last longer than our close garments. This article is likewise to be understood of plain undyed cloth, which was white; for the expense of dyeing, particularly purple, which the Romans and the ancients in general, most of all affected, was prodigious. Pelagium, one species of that dye, was worth fifty nummi, equal to eight shilling per pound. The buccinum, another species of it, was double that value; the violet purple was three pounds ten shillings and eleven pence per pound, and the Tyrian dye could scarcely be bought for one hundred and sixty ounces of silver per pound. There must also have been a great difference in the fineness of their wool, and consequently in the price of it. For a Roman pound of Padua wool, the finest of all, (though indeed when it was rather dear) sold for one hundred nummi, at which rate the English pound troy comes seventeen shillings and eight pence three farthings sterling.

Wine seems always to have been cheap at Rome. For, according to Columella, the common sort was worth eight pounds sterling per

ton.

In the early times of Rome, the price of a good calf was twentyfive ases, equal to one shilling and seven pence three-eights sterling. The price of a sheep a denarius, or eight pence, and the price of an ox ten times as much. These articles Arbuthnot quotes from Pliny, who, no doubt makes allowance for the alteration in the coin; or money must have been plenty at that time. This makes the price of wheat very high for the time.

According to Columella, the common mean rent of an acre of pasture ground was one pound eight shillings and ten pence. Lands were commonly reckoned at twenty-five years purchase. For the lands of the government were so let, paying according to the rate of four pounds per cent.

The price of land was considerably increased by the great treasures brought to Rome in Augustus's reign. An acre of the best ground in the city of Rome, under the emperors, may be reckoned to have brought in a ground rent of five pounds sterling per annum ; but at this period Rome, like modern Britain, had much more than its proportion of the universal money of the times.

Owing to this Roman monopoly of money, the price of an ordinary slave, in Cato Major's time, was three hundred and seventy-seven drachms, equal to more than forty-eight pounds sterling, while at Cairo they were worth only fifty dollars.

Before Domitian, the Roman soldiers served for under ten cents, and afterwards for about twelve cents a day; so that if we take the price of day labour from the pay of a soldier (which in most countries, and particularly ancient nations, it hardly ever exceeds) it will not make it much higher in Rome than it is now in France.

From the prices of all these articles taken together, we should conclude that the proportion which money bore to commodities in the most flourishing times of the commonwealth, and under the first emperors, was rather higher than it bears at present with us. But this could only be the case at Rome, and the neighbourhood of it. All the necessaries of life were considerably cheaper in Greece. Polybius, who lived in the time of the third Punic war, says that provi sions were so cheap in Italy in his time, that, in some places, the stated club in the inns was a semis a head, which is but little more than half a cent. And under the later emperors the prices of all necessaries were certainly nearly the same that they were in any part of Europe before the discovery of America.

All the articles mentioned above related to what may be called the necessaries of life. How extravagant the Romans were in entertainments and the elegancies of life, we may form some idea of from the following circumstance, that Roscius the actor (whose profession was less respectable at Rome than it is even with us) could gain five hundred sestertia, equal to four thousand and thirty-six pounds nine shillings and two pence sterling per annum; and per day, when he acted, one thousand nummi, equal to thirty-two pounds five shillings and ten pence.

The most moderate interest at Athens was twelve per cent. paid monthly, and according to Aristophanes it was somewhat more. The rent of other things, likewise, was very high in proportion to their value. Antidorus, says Demosthenes, paid three talents and an half for a house, which he let for a talent a year. If this were true, admitting it to have been an extraordinary case, it is no wonder that the hire of money bore so extraordinary a price in proportion to its value. Such circumstances as these are a demonstration of the precarious state of property. For both with regard to money and every thing else, the more secure it is supposed to be, the less annual interest is required in proportion to its esteemed value.

In the early times of the Roman commonwealth too, interest was at a medium twelve per cent. In the flourishing times of the commonwealth it fell to six, and though it was suddenly reduced to four upon the conquest of Egypt, it presently rose to its old standard; and in Pliny's time six per cent. was the public customary interest of money; Justinian reduced it to four per cent. and money lent to

masters of ships to one per cent. per month. This kind of interest had before been two per cent.

But there was a peculiarity in the Roman method of putting out money to interest, which must be explained, as we have nothing like it with us. With them it was customary after one hundred and one months to add six per cent. to the principal, besides the simple interest which was due upon the sum. This they called anatocismos, so that their usual rate for long interest was neither simple nor compound, but something between both.

The English money, though the same names do by no means correspond to the same quantity of precious metal as formerly, has not changed so much as the money of most other countries. In this part of the subject we are so happy as to be able to give a much more complete deduction of the changes both in the value of money, and the proportion it has borne to commodities, than in the preceding. A view of all the changes which the standard of our money has ever undergone, we shall present at once, in brief extracts from the account lately published of English coins by the society of antiquaries. But previous to this it will be proper to notice, that in the Saxon times, a shilling (at one time at least) was reckoned to contain five pence, or penny weights, and one pound contained forty-eight shillings, which is the same number of pence that a pound contains

now.

However, the proportion between the shilling and either the penny on the one hand, and the pound on the other, seems not to have been so constant and uniform as that between the penny and the pound. During the first race of the kings of France, the French sou, or shilling, appears, upon different occasions, to have contained five, twelve, twenty, and forty pennies. From the time of Charlemagne among the French, and from that of William the Conqueror among the English, the proportion between the pound, the shilling, and the penny, seems to have been uniformly the same as at present.

Though a different distribution of the subdivisions of a pound was introduced with the Normans, yet William the Conqueror brought no new weight into his mint; but the same weight used there some ages after, and called the pound of the tower of London, was the old pound of the Saxon moniers before the conquest. This pound was lighter than the pound troy by three ounces. It was divided into two hundred and forty pence, and consequently the intrinsic value of fifty-eight shillings and three haif pence of present British sterling. It may not be improper also to premise, that Edward III. was the first English king who coined any gold; and that no copper was coined by authority before James I. These pieces were not called farthings, but farthing tokens, and all people were at liberty to take or refuse them. Before the time of Edward III. gold was exchanged, like any other commodity, by its weight; and before the time of James I. copper was stamped by any person who chose to do it.

The French money has suffered much more by the diminution of its value than the English. Voltaire gives the following general account of it. The numerary pound in the time of Charlemagne was twelve ounces of silver. This pound was divided into twenty sols, and the sols into twelve deniers. In Europe that sol, which was equal to a crown at present, is now no more than a light piece of copper with a mixture of at most one-eleventh of silver. The livre, which formerly represented twelve ounces of silver, is in France no more than twenty sols, and the denier is one-third of that base coin we call a liard. Whereas a pound sterling is worth about twenty two francs of France, and the Dutch pound is nearly equal to twelve. Voltaire also gives us the following useful caution with respect to the computations made by several considerable French writers. Rolin, Fleury, and all the most useful writers, when they would express the value of talents, mine and sesterces, compute by an estimate made before the death of Colbert. But the mark of eight ounces, which was then worth twenty-six francs, ten sols, is now worth forty-nine livres, ten sols; a difference which amounts to near one half. Without remembering this variation, we should have a very erroneous idea of the strength of ancient states, &c.

The changes in the proportion between money and commodities in France may easily be imagined to have kept pace pretty nearly with those in England, and therefore need not be particularly pointed out. Accordingly, Voltaire observes that all provisions were eight or ten times cheaper in proportion to the quantity of money in Charlemagne's time; but he cannot be supposed to speak very accurately, when he says that in the reign of Lewis XI. who was cotemporary with Edward IV. money, meaning of the same standard, was worth about double of what it is at present, and also that it was of the same value in the reign of Lewis XIII. who reigned in the last year of James I. and the beginning of Charles I. For betwixt those two reigns was an interval of one hundred and fifty years, in which was the discovery of America, which occasioned the greatest general alteration of the proportion between money and commodities that ever was made in this part of the world. In the former reign, therefore, the value of money must have been much greater, and perhaps in the latter reign less than he makes it. At present the prices of commodities are higher in England than in France, besides that the poor people of France live upon much less than the poor in England, and their armies are maintained at less expense. It is computed by Mr. Hume, that a British army of twenty thousand men is maintained at near as great an expense as sixty thousand in France, and that the English fleet in the war of 1741, required as much money to support it as all the Roman legions in the time of the emperors. However, all that we can conclude from this last article is, that money is much more plentiful in Europe at present than it was in the Roman empire.

In the thirteenth century the common interest which the Jews had for their money, Voltaire says, was twenty per cent. But with regard to this we must consider the great contempt that nation was always held in, the large contributions they were frequently obliged to pay, the risk they run of never receiving the principal, the frequent confiscation of all their effects, and the violent persecutions to which they were exposed; in which circumstances it was impossible for them to lend money at all unless for a most extravagant interest, and much disproportioned to its real value. Before the discovery of America, and the plantation of the colonies, the interest of money was generally twelve per cent. all over Europe; and it has been growing gradually less since that time till it is now generally about four or five.

When sums of money are said to be raised by a whole people, in order to form a just estimate of it, we must take into consideration not only the quantity of the precious metal according to the standard of the coin, and the proportion of the quantity of coin to the commodities, but also the number and riches of the people who raise

it.

For admitting the two circumstances, which have been already explained, to be the same, still populous and rich countries will much more easily raise any certain sum of money than one that is thinly inhabited, and chiefly by poor people. This circumstance greatly adds to our surprise at the vast sums of money raised by William the Conqueror, who had a revenue nearly equal in value to twelve millions of pounds sterling (allowance being made for the standard of coin and the proportion it bore to commodities) from a country not so populous or rich as England is at present. Indeed the accounts historians give us of this prince, and the treasure he left behind him, are barely credible.

We now offer an apposite extract from Mr. Hume respecting THE PRIMARY DUTIES OF THE LEGISLATURE, and on the fatal consequences of a decrease of the efficient circulating medium, or the essential oil of industry, money, in any civilized country.

"Whether money be in a greater or less quantity, the good policy of the magistrate consists only in keeping it, if possible, still increasing; because, by that means, he keeps alive a spirit of industry in the nation, and increases the stock of labour, in which consists all real power and riches. A nation whose money decreases, is actually at that time much weaker, and more miserable than any other nation, which possesses no more money, but is on the increasing hand.

"This will be easily accounted for, if we consider that the alterations in the quantity of money either on the one side or the other, are not immediately attended with proportionable alterations in the prices of commodities. There is always an interval before matters be adjusted to their new situation; and this interval is as pernicious to industry, when gold and siver are diminishing, as it is advantageous, when these metals are increasing. The workman has not the same em