Page 543 sur 2651

In 1688 was granted the parliamentary bounty upon the exportation

of corn. The country gentlemen, who then composed a still greater

proportion of the legislature than they do at present, had felt

that the money price of corn was falling. The bounty was an

expedient to raise it artificially to the high price at which it

had frequently been sold in the times of Charles I. and II. It

was to take place, therefore, till wheat was so high as

fortyeight shillings the quarter; that is, twenty shillings, or

5-7ths dearer than Mr King had, in that very year, estimated the

grower's price to be in times of moderate plenty. If his

calculations deserve any part of the reputation which they have

obtained very universally, eight-and-forty shillings the quarter

was a price which, without some such expedient as the bounty,

could not at that time be expected, except in years of

extraordinary scarcity. But the government of King William was

not then fully settled.