twenty or thirtyfold. At the time of the Domesday Survey threefourths of the nation was agricultural-now only one-fourth. The nation now is as thoroughly a commercial nation as it was then an agricultural one. No wonder feudal tenures have given way to commercial ownership, and commercial principles been applied more and more to land.

The first branch of the inquiry is the history of how and by what process feudal tenants, whose feudal rents were originally equal to the annual value of their holdings, got rid of these feudal rents, and obtained commercial absolute ownership of their land.

No economic cause has had so large a share in this history as the fluctuations in the value of the precious metals and of money. The chief of these may be thus stated:—(1) A gradual rise in the value and purchasing power of silver between 1300 and 1500, until it had nearly doubled its value; (2) A rapid fall after the discovery of American mines, continued to the present time, in the proportion of six to one.

I shall not, I think, transgress against the doctrines laid down by Mr. J. S. Mill, in his chapter on "Measure of Value," if in estimating the fluctuations in the value of silver I take a quarter of wheat as the standard. The following table fairly exhibits, I believe, the fluctuations in the price of a quarter of wheat in current shillings of each period:

1250-1500 Period of fixed prices
1500—1560 {

68. per quarter.

Period of debased coinage and anarchy rapid rise.

in prices.

1600-1800 Uniform average price.

1800-1819

38s. 6d. per quarter.

Period of anarchy in prices, owing to
protective duties and unconvertible unnatural rise.
currency.

1820-1846 Protection duties and gold currency
1846-1869 Free trade.

568.

.

528.

By means of this table it will be easy to estimate the main fluctuations in the value of silver. They are not difficult to trace; for, happily, with the exception of two well-marked periods, the standard fineness of the coin and currency has, speaking generally, been honestly preserved throughout the whole interval from the Norman Conquest to the present time. The first period of exception was between 1543 and 1560, when the coin was debased by Tudor monarchs. The second period was between 1800 and 1819, when an inconvertible paper currency was, in fact, substituted for the coin, and by its inevitable depreciation produced the same results as a direct debasement of the coin would have done. These two periods were, consequently, periods of anarchy in prices, and have been marked as such. But while the standard fineness of the metal of the shilling has

been thus in the main kept uniform, its standard weight has varied. During the three hundred years before 1601 the quantity of metal in the shilling was by several successive stages steadily reduced, till the shilling of 1601 weighed little more than one-third of the shilling of the thirteenth century. To bring out clearly the fluctuations of the value of silver it will therefore be needful, 1st, to turn the shilling into grains of silver; and, 2ndly, to turn the value of a quarter of wheat also into grains of silver. Then it will be easy to deduce from these figures how much greater was the purchasing power of a grain of silver at each period than it is at the present time. These figures I have placed side by side in the table given below::

1500-1527

144

1527-1543

128

During this period the rise in the price
of wheat and fall in purchasing power

1543-1560 [coin debased] of silver was rapid, owing to the disco

very of the American mines.

Four.
Five.

Six.

half.

I am not sure that the rise in silver before 1500 has ever been properly appreciated. Mr. Rogers, in his recent work-invaluable as an encyclopædia of facts relating to prices in the fourteenth century-seems to doubt the fact of the rise; and adopts an ingenious, but as I think untenable, theory to explain it away. Looking at the drain of coin from the West to the East which must have been involved in the support of the crusading hosts, the commerce and increased intercourse between East and West opened out by the Crusades, the growth of commerce in western Europe, proved by the population and prosperity of Flanders, it would have been strange if there had not been an increased demand for currency. These causes were European, and not merely English. Then look at England. What a constant drain of coin out of England the hundred years' war with France must have caused! What an increase of hoarding the Wars of the Roses must have given rise to! How much silver must have been coined into plate to meet the increasing luxury and display which was everywhere complained of! In the absence of any greatly increased supply of silver, it is not unnatural

(1) Vol. i. p. 177.

that silver should have doubled its value in the two hundred years between 1300 and 1500. But during this two hundred years, in which silver doubled its value, wheat remained at the uniform price of 6s. a quarter. How is this to be explained? Why did not the price of wheat fall in consequence to 3s. a quarter? The answer is simply this, and is very important:-Because successive English governments lowered the weight of the coin by gradual and tentative steps as fast as silver rose in value. And they did so, no doubt, with a view of maintaining a fixity of prices, which was absolutely essential to those classes who were most fully represented in Parliament, viz., the landholders. It was essential to them, 1st, because both rents and wages were often payable either in coin or in corn, and it was important, therefore, to preserve the relations between them constant; and 2ndly, because the feu-duties of the landholders had become commuted into fixed money payments, and therefore, if the coin had been allowed to retain its original weight, the burden of their feudal rents would have gradually increased in weight with the rise in silver, until at last they would have lost their proper relation, not only to the price of corn, but also to the value of land. The feudal burdens would in fact have been doubled in weight, and might often have even surpassed the value of the land, so as to have converted the landed estate of the lord of the manor and the freeholder into a damnosa hereditas. Whereas, by the alteration in the weight of the coin, feudal burdens were kept at a uniform relation to the value of the land, and the silent confiscation of the feudal tenant's property avoided.

As a matter of fact, this period, during which silver was gradually rising till it doubled its value, was turned, by the gradual reduction in the weight of the coin, from a period of falling prices into one of remarkable fixity in prices; and thus a great social revolution was averted. At the same time another indirect result was unconsciously secured; for by the end of the two hundred years over which the period of fixed prices extended, long usage had once for all established the principle that feudal burdens, commuted as they had been into fixed money payments in current coin, could never be altered to the disadvantage of the feudal tenant.

This was the first step in the history of how feudal tenants grew up into absolute owners.

The next step was the economic result of the fall in the value of silver and rise in prices after 1500, consequent upon the influx into Europe of American silver, and aggravated by reckless Tudor tam

(1) See previous table.

(2) See 25 Ed. III. stat. 2, c. 1, 2, p. 311, and 34 Ed. III. c. vi. The fluctuations in the price of corn from year to year were moderated by the statutory prohibition of its export when above 6s. Sd. a quarter, and its importation when under that price.

pering with the coin. For the feudal burdens on the land, having been reduced to fixed payments in current coin, of course dwindled into a less and less fraction of the value of the land as silver fell in value and lost in purchasing power. Silver in 1500 was six times as valuable as now (taking corn as the standard); therefore the fall in silver accounts for a sixfold reduction in the relative burden of the feudal rents on the land. In plain words, it wiped off the land, by a silent and gradual process, five-sixths of the old feudal burden; and left the feudal tenant, therefore, so far at least, on the road to absolute ownership.

There is yet another economic cause which has played into the hands of the old feudal tenants, and helped them on towards absolute ownership. I mean the natural rise in the value of land itself, owing chiefly to the increasing population.

The above table shows that between the year 1500 and the present time the rise in the value of strictly agricultural land-expressed, not in current coin, but in quarters of wheat-has been about eighteenfold; so that the weight of the feudal burdens on the land, which had by the fall in silver been reduced to one-sixth of the value of the land, has been divided again by 18 by the natural rise in the value of land—that is to say, the fixed feudal burdens have been reduced by these two causes combined to 100th part of the value of the land, and the result has been the conversion of the feudal tenant, subject to a rent originally equal to the value of the land, into practically an absolute owner, subject only to an altogether insignificant quit-rent.

The question still remains, What has become of these nominal quit-rents ?

The answer to this question also is clear.

The statute of 12 Car. II. c. 2, by which all military tenures (ie., all tenures but copyhold and socage tenures) were abolished, did not abolish these quit-rents. It contained a proviso that the Act "shall not take away any rents, certain heriots or suits of court belonging or incident to any former tenures now taken away or altered by virtue of this Act, or other services incident or belonging to tenure in common socage due or to grow due to the king's majesty or mesne lord or other private person.'

So that these quit-rents survived the abolition of military tenures. But by statute 2 Car. II. c. 6, and 22 and 23 Car. II. c. 24, provisions were made whereby all the royal rents of all kinds (except those due to the king as lord of any manor) were vested in trustees for sale, and, I suppose, sold accordingly. The purchasers of these rents would naturally very often be the owners of the property from which they were due. And even if bought by others, their being thus thrown into the market would facilitate their ultimate redemption.

It is true that these statutes would only directly affect lands held of the king. But although out of the 9,300 tenants in capite and mesne tenants mentioned in the Domesday Survey only about 1,400 were tenants in capite, yet the number and proportion of these had been always on the increase, owing to the provisions of the statute of "Quia emptores." Nor should it be forgotten that all the numerous confiscations of the manors of attainted lords at different times, and of the abbey lands under Henry VIII., had resulted in their being granted out afresh, to hold of the king. So that probably under Charles II. the proportion was very considerable. And, again, it is likely that the statutes of Charles. II. were in themselves evidence of a general movement in the direction of the release or extinguishment of small quit-rents, which must have become troublesome to collect. It is not often that such sensible economic changes begin at the royal exchequer. Further, as regards the quit-rents payable to lords of manors from their manorial tenants, a great number of them have been extinguished under the Enclosure and Enfranchisement Acts. Within the last half century there have been 2,000 Enclosure Acts,1 embracing, altogether, something like 8,000,000 acres, and it (1) Mr. Porter gives the number of Enclosure Bills as follows:

1801-10
1811-20

906

771