e coin of the realm was
greatly debased, and as rapidly as the mint sent out money of standard
weight and purity, it was melted down, and disappeared from the
circulation. The influx of silver from South America to Europe had spent
its action on prices before the middle of the century; the precious
metals had again hardened in value; and for forty years before the
Revolution the price of corn had been steadily falling in money price.
The liberty of exporting wool had also now been cut down before the
English manufactures were able to take up the home supply, and
agriculturists were consequently forced to extend their tillage. When
the current coin of the kingdom became wholly debased by clipping and
other knaveries, there ensued both irregularity and inflation of nominal
prices, and the producers and consumers of corn found themselves equally
ill at ease. The farmers complained that the home-market for their
produce was unremunerative and unsatisfactory; the masses of the people
complained with no less reason that the money wages of labour could not
purchase them the usual necessaries of life. Macaulay, in his _History
of England_, says of this period, with little exaggeration, that "the
price of the necessaries of life, of shoes, of ale, of oatmeal, rose
fast. The labourer found that the bit of metal which, when he received
it, was called a shilling, would hardly, when he purchased a pot of beer
or a loaf of rye bread, go as far as sixpence." The state of agriculture
could not be prosperous under these conditions. But when the government
of William surmounted this difficulty of the coinage, as they did
surmount it, under the guidance of Sir Isaac Newton, with remarkable
statesmanship, it necessarily followed that prices, so far from rising,
declined, because, for one reason, they were now denominated in a solid
metallic value. The rise of prices of corn attending the first years of
the export bounty was consequently of very brief duration. The average
price of wheat in the Winchester market, which in the ten years
1600-1699 was L2: 10s., fell in the ten years 1716-1725 to L1: 5: 4, and
in the ten years 1746-1755 to L1: 1: 2-3/4. The system of corn law
established in the reign of William and Mary was probably the most
perfect to be conceived for advancing the agricultural interest of any
country. Every stroke of the legislature seemed complete to this end.
Yet it wholly failed of its purpose. The price of wheat again rose