THE EARLY VALUE OF GOLD.
(TO THE EDITOR OF THE "SPECTATOR.')
SIR,—Will you allow me to raise an issue on the strength of a sentence in your very interesting article on "The ' Find ' at Laurium"? I am asking for something more than your usual courtesy and liberality, for your remark was only incidental, but perhaps you may consider the question it involves worth a little discussion at this the dullest season of a dull year. You say "a very little gold constituted wealth" in the time of the ancient kings and nobles. Is this so certain? It is, of course, true with regard to the middle-ages, when the purchasing power of gold and silver was confessedly at least a dozen times as great as it is at present. But the case seems to have been very different, say, in the time of the early Cmsars. The question is one of consider- able difficulty, and perhaps data are wanting to decide it with certainty. But we can get a few facts like the following. Corn under the, Republic (according to Mommsen) sold at an average price of about 21s. the quarter, though some- times it reached five times this price ; but the average cost of flour, according to Pliny, was in his time 64s. a quarter. The loss from inefficient grinding appears from other authorities to have been considerable ; still, this average price of flour seems to point to a rise in the average price of corn, owing to which it could not have differed widely from that common now-a-days. Tacitus tells us that under Nero the corn in the Government stores was on one occasion sold at 16s. the quarter, but this seems to have been simply a charitable measure intended to relieve a pressing need. Such indications as we have of the prices of other com- modities and of the common rate of wages confirm the impression that the purchasing value of silver was not much greater than it is at present. And gold, as compared with silver, was worth less than it now is, the common ratio being from 10 to 12 to 1, as against 16 to 1. Do not these facts seem to show that a little gold would by no means represent large wealth ? I suppose that the great increase in the value of the precious metals which we find in the middle-ages was due to the fact that the supply from mines, worked, as you say, very unscientifically, did not keep pace with the requirements of the Western world, then, as now, con- stantly drained of its bullion by the Eastern trade, and frequently setting apart a considerable amount of it for personal and ecclesi- astical ornament. The rise in the value of gold and silver seems
to me to have been due to the gradual exhaustion of the ancient mines, just as the rapid fall in value was due in the sixteenth century to the discovery of the Peruvian and Mexican stores, in the nineteenth to the inflow from California and Australia. That there was an important rise, hardly less marked than the subse- quent fall, I think, is certain.
The question, I may add, has been fully discussed by Rodbertus in Hildebrand's " Zeitschrift für Nationaliikonomie," Vols. XV. and XVI. ; his arguments do not seem to me by any means all equally cogent, but some of them are of considerable weight ; and Dr. Friedliinder, who had previously argued in favour of the ordinary opinion, has since (" Sittengeschichte," III., 9) confessed himself completely convinced.—I am, Sir, &c., A. S. W.
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