price is exactly double. If every thing was
conducted in a fair way, corn, from all countries, where it is equally as
cheap as in France, might be brought and sold in London, at the

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{141} At Bruges, (in Flanders) at Antwerp, Cologne, Ghent, or any of
those decayed towns, house-rent was fallen, before the French
revolution, to little more than an acknowledgement for occupation,
where the houses were large and retired. This induced people to live at
those places, who would not otherwise have done so. Small houses,
lately built, were more expensive than the large old ones, built in the
time that commerce flourished.
-=-

[end of page #164]

usual market price; but, before Paris could get a supply from London,
the bread would cost three times its usual price. This circumstance, if
properly managed, might be turned to advantage; why it is not, is
difficult to say, and is a proof that there are either regulations, or
practices without regulation, that counteract the true nature of things;
for it would not cost a farthing a pound to bring the corn from Paris to
the London market.

Paris is only mentioned here for the sake of comparison, and because
the average prices have nearly the proportion of one to two. The
reasons why corn is not brought from thence are no secret, but the
same reasoning will apply to American corn, corn from Barbary, or
the Baltic, and from other places, where the value of money is greater
than in England. {142}

The principal of the other effects of the depreciation of money are to
be found in the chapter on the exterior Causes of the Decline of
Nations, as it is in its foreign transactions that the depreciation of
money is the most felt.

In the interior, that depreciation only acts when there is a considerable
lapse of time, during which the value has altered; it has, in general, no
effect on transactions that are begun and finished within a short
period, and in the interior of the country itself.

The depreciation of money, wherever it takes place, would cause an
increase of taxes, even if there were no other reason for it; but, in so
far it counteracts itself, by making them to be more easily born. =sic=
Whatever its particular effects may be, and however complicated they
are, the general tendency of the depreciation of money is to depress
industry in that country, and to encourage it in others, where the value
is greater than in it.

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{142} In America the value of money is les