The first sort of rude produce of which the price rises in the
progress of improvement is that which it is scarce in the power of
human industry to multiply at all. It consists in those things which
nature produces only in certain quantities, and which, being of a very
perishable nature, it is impossible to accumulate together the produce
of many different seasons. Such are the greater part of rare and
singular birds and fishes, many different sorts of game, almost all
wild-fowl, all birds of passage in particular, as well as many other
things. When wealth and the luxury which accompanies it increase,
the demand for these is likely to increase with them, and no effort of
human industry may be able to increase the supply much beyond what
it was before this increase of the demand. The quantity of such
commodities, therefore, remaining the same, or nearly the same,
while the competition to purchase them is continually increasing,
their price may rise to any degree of extravagance, and seems not to
be limited by any certain boundary. If woodcocks should become so
fashionable as to sell for twenty guineas apiece, no effort of human
industry could increase the number of those brought to market much
beyond what it is at present. The high price paid by the Romans, in
the time of their greatest grandeur, for rare birds and fishes, may in
this manner easily be accounted for. These prices were not the effects
of the low value of silver in those times, but of the high value of
such rarities and curiosities as human industry could not multiply
at pleasure. The real value of silver was higher at Rome, for some
time before and after the fall of the republic, than it is through the
greater part of Europe at present. Three sestertii, equal to about
sixpence sterling, was the price which the republic paid for the
modius or peck of the tithe wheat of Sicily. This price, however,
was probably below the average market price, the obligation to deliver
their wheat at this rate being considered as a tax upon the Sicilian
farmers. When the Romans, therefore, had occasion to order more corn
than the tithe of wheat amounted to, they were bound by capitulation
to pay for the surplus at the rate of four sestertii, or eightpence
sterling, the peck; and this had probably been reckoned the moderate
and reasonable, that is, the ordinary or average contract price of
those times; it is equal to about one-and-twenty shillings the
quarter. Eight-and-twenty shillings the quarter was, before the late
years of scarcity, the ordinary contract price of English wheat, which
in quality is inferior to the Sicilian, and generally sells for a
lower price in the European market. The value of silver, therefore, in
those ancient times, must have been to its value in the present as
three to four inversely; that is, three ounces of silver would then
have purchased the same quantity of labour and commodities which
four ounces will do at present. When we read in Pliny, therefore, that
Seius bought a white nightingale, as a present for the Empress
Agrippina, at a price of six thousand sestertii, equal to about
fifty pounds of our present money; and that Asinius Celer purchased
a surmullet at the price of eight thousand sestertii, equal to about
sixty-six pounds thirteen shillings and fourpence of our present
money, the extravagance of those prices, how much soever it may
surprise us, is apt, notwithstanding, to appear to us about
one-third less than it really was. Their real price, the quantity of
labour and subsistence which was given away for them, was about
one-third more than their nominal price is apt to express to us in the
present times. Seius gave for the nightingale the command of a
quantity of labour and subsistence equal to what L66 13s. 4d. would
purchase in the present times; and Asinius Celer gave for the
surmullet the command of a quantity equal to what L88 9 1/2d. would
purchase. What occasioned the extravagance of those high prices was,
not so much the abundance of silver as the abundance of labour and
subsistence of which those Romans had the disposal beyond what was
necessary for their own use. The quantity of silver of which they
had the disposal was a good deal less than what the command of the
same quantity of labour and subsistence would have procured to them in
the present times.