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an inquiry into the nature and causes of the wealth of nations phần 3

Năm 1350, và đối với một số thời gian trước khi, giá trung bình của quý của lúa mì ở Anh dường như không có được ước tính thấp hơn so với bốn ounce bạc, trọng lượng tháp, bằng khoảng hai mươi shilling tiền hiện tại của chúng ta. Từ mức giá này có vẻ như đã giảm dần dần để hai ounce bạc, | The Wealth of Nations Adam Smith Digression concerning the Variations in the Value of Silver during the Course of the Four last Centuries FIRST PERIOD 450 1 In 1350 and for some time before the average price of the quarter of wheat in England seems not to have been estimated lower than four ounces of silver Tower weight equal to about twenty shillings of our present money. From this price it seems to have fallen gradually to two ounces of silver equal to about ten shillings of our present money the price at which we find it estimated in the beginning of the sixteenth century and at which it seems to have continued to be estimated till about 1570. 451 2 In 1350 being the 25th of Edward III was enacted what is called The Statute of Labourers. In the preamble it complains much of the insolence of servants who endeavoured to raise their wages upon their masters. It therefore ordains that all servants and labourers should for the future be contented with the same wages and liveries liveries in those times signified not only cloaths but provisions which they had been accustomed to receive in the 20th year of the king and the four preceding years that upon this account their livery wheat should nowhere be estimated higher than tenpence a bushel and that it should always be in the option of the master to deliver them either the wheat or the money. Ten-pence a bushel therefore had in the 25th of Edward III been reckoned a very moderate price of wheat since it required a particular statute to oblige servants to accept of it in exchange for their usual livery of provisions and it had been reckoned a reasonable price ten years before that or in the 16th year of the king the term to which the statute refers. But in the 16th year of Edward III tenpence contained about half an ounce of silver Tower-weight and was nearly equal to half-a-crown of our present money. Four ounces of silver Tower weight therefore equal to six shillings and eightpence of the money of those times and to