provide a substitute for barter without a coinage; but the system which it would aim at establishing is in reality anything rather than an improvement of simple, unregulated barter. The real price, or exchangeable value, of a commodity, depending as it does upon a variety of circumstances which are constantly in a state of fluctuation, is essentially a variable quantity, and we can no more fix it by a law than we can fix the wind. A law, therefore, attempting to fix it would only do injustice and mischief; it would, in so far as it was operative, merely substitute a false and unfair price of commodities for their natural and proper price.
When the prices of commodities, however, are thus settled by the law, it may be presumed that the prices assigned are those generally borne by the commodities at the time; and in this point of view the law becomes of historic value as a record of ancient prices. Thus, from one of the Saxon laws of King Ethelred we learn that in England the common prices of certain articles, about the end of the tenth century, were as follows:—
| ₤. | s. | d. | |||||
| Of a | Man, or slave | A pound | equivalent to | 2 | 16 | 3 | sterl. |
| Horse | Thirty shillings | " |
1 | 15 | 2 | ||
| Mare or colt | Twenty shillings | " |
1 | 3 | 5 | ||
| Ass or mule | Twelve shillings | " |
0 | 14 | 1 | ||
| Ox | Six shillings | " |
0 | 7 | 0 | ½ | |
| Cow | Five shillings | " |
0 | 5 | 6 | ||
| Swine | One shil. and 3 pennies | " |
0 | 1 | 10 | ½ | |
| Sheep | One shilling | " |
0 | 1 | 2 | ||
| Goat | Two pennies | " |
0 | 0 | 5 | ½ | |
We are not to suppose, however, that these legal rates were always adhered to in actual sales and purchases. The prices of all commodities among the Saxons no doubt rose and fell as they do at present, and with much more suddenness and violence than now; for, in that rude period, from the scarcity of capital, and the comparatively little communication between one place and another, supplies of all kinds were necessarily much more imperfectly distributed than they now are over both time and space; and any deficiency that might, from any cause, occur, was left to press with its whole severity upon the particular moment and the local market without the
