Page:History of the Indian Archipelago Vol 3.djvu/418

 402 COMMEUCIALDESCIUPTION OF price in Europe ought not to exceed Gd. a pound, but it has very generally been twelve times as much, and in England, including duties, seventeen times as much. The consumer pays this price, we need not scruple to say, for no other purpose than that a political juggle may be played, by which the party who plays it imposes upon itself, without gaining any earthly advantage, while the grower is cheated out of his property and out of his liberty. The same quantity of labour producing four times as much of nutmegs as mace, the natural price of the mace ought to be four times the price of the nutmegs. The market price, of course, occasion- ally varied from this, but, in general, we find an approximation to it. In the first Dutch voyage, nutmegs appear to have been at a wonderfully low rate, and to have cost no more than one- sixth part of the price of mace. Linschoten's prices at Sunda Calapa in 1583, I imagine, are more to be relied on, and here the mace is described as costing very nearly three times as much as nutmegs ; but in this estimate we are to reckon in the nutmeg the cost of transporting, 381 per cent, of useless shells, which may be considered as the tare of the article. At the markets on the Caspian, the relative prices approximated still more from the same cause ; and here we find the mace valued at no more than 80 per cent, above the price of the nutmeg. In order thoroughly to comprehend the nature 12