Page:Craik History of British Commerce Vol 1.djvu/120

118 it is, as we have already had occasion to remark, impossible to make any statement which shall be universally applicable. The question of the value of money at any given period is merely a question of the price of a particular commodity—namely, the metal of which the money is made. But we have no means of estimating with precision the price of any commodity whatever, in the scientific sense of that term. All that we can do is to state it relatively to the price of some other commodity. This is all that we really do when we state the money-price of anything. That is only a statement of the relation between the price of the article in question and the price of the other article called money. It is no expression either of the general price of either, or of the relation of the price of either to that of any other article whatever. Commodities of all kinds, from causes sufficiently obvious, are constantly changing their relative positions in regard to price; and, therefore, the relation between the prices of any two of them can be no permanent index of the relation between the prices of any two others. In other words, the money-price of any one article at a particular time will give us no certain information as to the money-price either of all other articles, or of any other article.

Although, indeed, no precise estimate can be arrived at of the general value of money in former times as compared with its present value, many important conclusions in regard to the state of society, and the command possessed by the several classes of the population over the necessaries and comforts of life, may be drawn from the notices that have been preserved of the money-prices of commodities and labour at different periods. But the only point which properly belongs to our present subject is that of the relative values of gold and silver in the period we have been reviewing. The relation between the values of these two metals has fluctuated considerably in different ages. In ancient Rome, about the commencement of our era, it seems to have been usually as one to ten. About the fourth century, however, silver had become so much more plentiful, or gold so much