This is that then which makes land, as well as other things, dear: plenty of buyers, and but few sellers: and so, by the rule of contraries, plenty of sellers and few buyers makes land cheap.

He that will justly estimate the value of any thing, must consider its quantity in proportion to its vent, for this alone regulates the price. The value of any thing, compared with itself or with a standing measure, is greater, as its quantity is less in proportion to its vent: but, in comparing it, or exchanging it with any other thing, the quantity and vent of that thing too must be allowed for, in the computation of their value. But, because the desire of money is constantly almost every where the same, its vent varies very little, but as its greater scarcity enhances its price, and increases the scramble: there being nothing else that does easily supply the want of it: the lessening its quantity, therefore, always increases its price, and makes an equal portion of it exchange for a greater of any other thing. Thus it comes to pass, that there is no manner of settled proportion between the value of an ounce of silver and any other commodity: for, either varying its quantity in that country, or the commodity changing its quantity in proportion to its vent, their respective values change, i. e. less of one will barter for more of the other though, in the ordinary way of speaking, it is only said, that the price of the commodity, not of the money, is changed. For example, half an ounce of silver in England will exchange sometimes for a whole bushel of wheat, sometimes for half, sometimes but a quarter, and this it does equally, whether by use it be apt to bring in to the owner six in the hundred of its own weight per annum, or nothing at all: it being only the change of the quantity of wheat to its vent, supposing we have still the same sum of money in the kingdom; or else the change of the quantity of our money in the kingdom, supposing the quantity of wheat, in respect to its vent, be the same too, that makes the change in the price of wheat. For if you alter the quantity, or vent, on either side, you presently alter the price, but no other way in the world, to t

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For it is not the being, adding, increasing, or diminishing of any good quality in any commodity, that makes its price greater, or less; but only as it makes its quantity, or vent, greater, or less, in proportion one to another. This will easily appear by two or three instances.

1. The being of any good and useful quantity in any thing neither increases its price, nor indeed makes it have any price at all, but only as it lessens its quantity, or increases its vent; each of these in proportion to one another. What more useful or necessary things are there to the being, or well-being of men, than air and water? and yet these have generally no price at all, nor yield any money: because their quantity is immensely greater than their vent, in most places of the world. But as soon as ever water (for air still offers itself every where, without restraint or inclosure, and therefore is nowhere of any price) comes any where to be reduced into any proportion to its consumption, it begins presently to have a price, and is sometimes sold dearer than wine. Hence it is, that the best and most useful things are commonly the cheapest; because, though their consumption be great, yet the bounty of providence has made their production large, and suitable to it.

2. Nor does the adding an excellency to any commodity raise its price, unless it increase its consumption. For, suppose there should be taught a way (which should be published to the knowledge of every one) to make a medicine of wheat alone, that should infallibly cure the stone: it is certain the discovery of this quality in that grain would give it an excellency very considerable: and yet this would not increase the price of it one farthing in twenty bushels, because its quantity, or vent, would not hereby, to any sensible degree, be altered. 13. Neither does the increasing of any good quality, in any sort of things, make it yield more. For though teasels be much better this year than any were last, they are not one jot dearer, unless they be fewer too, or the consumption of them greater.

4. Nor does the lessening the good qualities of any sort of commodity lessen its price; which is evident in

hops, that are usually dearest those years they are worst. But, if it happen to be a species of commodity whose defects may be supplied by some other, the making of it worse does lessen its price, because it hinders its vent. For, if rye should any year prove generally smutty, or grown, no question it would yield less money than otherwise, because the deficiency of that might be, in some measure, made up by wheat, and other grain. But if it be a sort of commodity whose use no other known thing can supply, it is not its being better, or worse, but its quantity, and vent, is that alone which regulates and determines its value.

To apply it now to money, as capable of different rates of interest. To money, considered in its proper. use as a commodity passing in exchange from one to another, all that is done by interest, is but the adding to it by agreement, or public authority, a faculty, which naturally it has not, of increasing every year six per cent. Now if public authority sink use to four per cent. it is certain it diminishes this good quality in money one-third. one-third. But yet this making the money of England not one farthing more than it was, it alters not the measures, upon which all changeable commodities increase, or sink their price; and so makes not money exchange for less of any commodity than it would without this alteration of its interest. If lessening use to four per cent. should at all alter the quantity of money, and make it less, it would make money, as it has the nature of a commodity, dearer, i. e. a less quantity of money would exchange for a greater quantity of another commodity, than it would before, This perhaps will appear a little plainer by these following particulars :

1. That the intrinsic, natural worth of any thing, consists in its fitness to supply the necessities, or serve the conveniencies of human life; and the more necessary it is to our being, or the more it contributes to our well-being, the greater is its worth. But yet,

2. That there is no such intrinsic, natural, settled value in any thing, as to make any assigned quantity of it constantly worth any assigned quantity of another.

3. The marketable value of any assigned quantities of two, or more commodities, are (pro hic et nunc) equal, when they will exchange one for another. As, supposing one bushel of wheat, two bushels of barley, thirty pounds of lead, and one ounce of silver, will now in the market be taken one for another, they are then of equal worth: and, our coin being that which Englishmen reckon by, an Englishman would say, that now one bushel of wheat, two bushels of barley, thirty pounds of lead, and one ounce of silver, were equally worth five shillings.

4. The change of this marketable value of any commodity, in respect of another commodity, or in respect of a standing, common measure, is not the altering of any intrinsic value, or quality, in the commodity; (for musty and smutty corn will sell dearer at one time than the clean and sweet at another) but the alteration of some proportion which that commodity bears to something else.

5. This proportion in all commodities, whereof money is one, is the proportion of their quantity to the vent. The vent is nothing else but the passing of commodities from one owner to another in exchange; and is then called quicker, when a greater quantity of any species of commodity is taken off from the owners of it, in an equal space of time.

6. This vent is regulated, i. e. made quicker or slower, as greater or less quantities of any saleable commodity are removed out of the way and course of trade; separated from public commerce; and no longer lie within the reach of exchange. For, though any commodity should shift hands ever so fast, and be exchanged from one man to another; yet, if they were not thereby exempted from trade and sale, and did not cease to be any longer traffic, this would not at all make or quicken their vent. But this, seldom or never happening, makes very little or no alteration.

7. Things are removed out of the market, or hands of commerce, and so their vent altered three ways; 1. By consumption, when the commodity in its use is destroyed, as, meat, drink, and clothes, &c. all that

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is so consumed is quite gone out of the trade of the world. 2. By exportation; and all that is so carried away gone out of the trade of England, and concerns Englishmen no more in the price of their commodities among themselves for their own use, than if it were out of the world. 3. By buying and laying up for a man's private use. For what is by any of these ways shut out of the market, and no longer moveable by the hand of commerce, makes no longer any part of merchantable ware, and so, in respect of trade, and the quantity of any commodity, is not more considerable than if it were not in being. All these three terminating at last in consumption of all commodities, (excepting only jewels and plate, and some few others, which wear out but insensibly) may properly enough pass under that name. Engrossing too has some influence on the present vent: but this inclosing some considerable part of any commodity, (for if the engrossing be of all the commodity, and it be of general use, the price is at the will of the engrosser) out of the free common of trade, only for some time, and afterwards returning again to sale, makes not usually so sensible and general an alteration in the vent as the others do but yet influences the price, and the vent more, according as it extends itself to a larger portion of the commodity, and hoards it up longer.

8. Most other portable commodities (excepting jewels, plate, &c.) decaying quickly in their use, but money being less consumed, or increased, i. e. by slower degrees removed from, or brought into the free commerce of any country, than the greatest part of other merchandize; and so the proportion between its quantity and vent altering slower than in most other commodities; it is commonly looked on as a standing measure, to judge of the value of all things, especially being adapted to it by its weight and denomination in coinage.

9. Money, whilst the same quantity of it is passing up and down the kingdom in trade, is really a standing measure of the falling and rising value of other things, in reference to one another: and the alteration of price