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This rise in the value of silver, in proportion to that of corn,

may either have been owing altogether to the increase of the

demand for that metal, in consequence of increasing improvement

and cultivation, the supply, in the mean time, continuing the

same as before; or, the demand continuing the same as before, it

may have been owing altogether to the gradual diminution of the

supply: the greater part of the mines which were then known in

the world being much exhausted, and, consequently, the expense of

working them much increased; or it may have been owing partly to

the one, and partly to the other of those two circumstances. In

the end of the fifteenth and beginning of the sixteenth

centuries, the greater part of Europe was approaching towards a

more settled form of government than it had enjoyed for several

ages before.