Again, no man of common sense need be told that a rigid multiple is absolutely impossible of discovery.  The search for such a multiple is like a search for an index number which shall apply to all the varying economic habits of the modern world.  One cannot say:  “Multiply prices by 10” or “Multiply prices by 20,” and thus afford the modern reader a sound basis; but one can say, after some observation:  “Multiply by such-and-such a multiple” (wherever very large and varied expenditure is concerned) and you will certainly have a minimum; though how much more such expenditure may have represented in those very different and far simpler social circumstances cannot be precisely determined.  What, then, is the rough multiple that will give us our minimum?

The inquiry has been prosecuted by more than one authority upon the basis of wheat.  One may say that wheat in normal years in the early sixteenth century stood at about an eighth of wheat in what I may call the normal years of the nineteenth, before the influx of Colonial produce began to be serious, and before the depreciation of silver combined with other causes to disturb prices.

Those who have taken wheat for their basis, recognising, as even they must do, that 8 is far too low a multiple, are willing to grant 10, and sometimes even 12, and this way of calculating, largely because it is a ready rule, has entered into many books upon the Reformation.  The early Tudor penny is turned into the modern shilling.

But this basis of calculation is false, because the eating of wheaten bread was not then the universal thing it is to-day.  The English proletarian of to-day is, in comparison with the large well-to-do class of his fellow-citizens, a far poorer man than his ancestry ever were.  Wheaten bread is, indeed, his necessity, but good fresh meat (for example) is an exception for him.

Now the Englishmen of earlier times made beef a necessity, and yet we find that beef will permit a higher multiple than wheat.  Beef will give you a multiple of 12, and just as wheat, giving you a multiple of 8, permits a somewhat higher general multiple, so beef, giving you a multiple of 12, permits a higher one.  So if we were to make beef our staple instead of wheat we should get a multiple of 13 or 14 by which to turn the money of the first third of the sixteenth century into the money of our own time.

But beef, in its turn, is not a fair standard; during much of the year pork had, under the circumstances of the time, to be eaten instead of fresh meat.  Pork is to-day almost the only meat all the year round of many labourers on the land.  Now pork gives a still higher multiple:  it gives 20.  For the pound that you would now give in Chichester Market for a breeding sow, you gave in the early years of the sixteenth century a shilling.  So here you have another article of common consumption which gives you a multiple of 20.

Strong ale gives you a higher multiple still—­one of nearly 24.  You could then get strong ale at a penny a gallon.  You will hardly get it at two shillings a gallon to-day; and yet it is made of the same materials.  The small ale of the hayfield will give you almost any multiple you like; it is from eightpence to ninepence a gallon now:  it was often given away in the sixteenth century as water would be.