forbidden by royal proclamation. The limit fixed by the act of 1436, as that within which the right of exportation remained independent of the crown, was so long as the home price (of the quarter of wheat) did not exceed 6s. 8d. In 1463 (by 3 Ed. IV. c. 2) a new advantage was given to the producers, by importation being for the first time forbidden whenever prices should be under that point. In this state the law remained for seventy-one years. But then in 1534 an act was passed (the 25th Hen. VIII. c. 2) which (in so far at least as regarded the exportation of corn) swept away all the legislation of the preceding hundred and forty years, and suddenly restored for a time the old original state of the law, by which exportation was prohibited in all circumstances except under the royal licence. The importation of the article, indeed, still remained fettered by the act of 1463; but probably that act was now nearly inoperative from the rise of prices that had taken place since it passed;—a change that would, to be sure, make the act of 1436 also a dead letter; so that what was really done by Henry VIII.'s act of 1534 was principally to repeal Richard II.'s act of 1394, which first made free exportation the rule and non-exportation the exception, time itself having done the rest. However, the law, as we have said, was now (except as to the partial and probably inapplicable and harmless restriction on importation) brought back in all respects to the state in which it was before the course of legislation in favour of the agricultural interest began. But this lasted for twenty years only. In 1554 (by the 1 and 2 Phil, and Mary, c. 5) the law of 1463 was revived, and exportation again made free when the price was under 6s. 8d. It is expressly stated in the preamble to this new act that the general prohibition of exportation by the act of 1534 had been extensively evaded or completely disregarded: "yet notwithstanding," are the words of the preamble, "many and sundry covetous and insatiable persons, seeking their own lucres and gains, had and daily do carry and convey innumerable quantity as well of corn, cheese, butter, and other victual [the prohibition
