44 /{'. s. ff E FOl$ returns extending back to 1700. The maximum of foreign trade does not always coincide exactly with the 'year of maximum prices; and two other sets of figures have enabled me to make the necessary verification or correction one way or the other. Back to 1781 I have used the statistics of bankruptcies' adopting the rule that when prices are rising rapidly bankruptcies are low, and tha? the first year of higher bankruptcies after one or two low year? is the year of maximum prices in which the turn came. Prior to 1745 I have made use of a series of figures giving the annual production of tin in the mines of Cornwall and Devon as far back as 1667 ? and these figures give ery striking maxima of production sometimes in the same year as a trade maximum, but more often in the year following. This latter is exactly what we might expect, as the response of pro- duction ?o high price would not be rapid in those days, and the fall of price was not usually serious until the year following the highest price. We find the same thing in the nineteenth century in the output. of coal, partly due to the long contract system, that a year of maximum output comes a year later than the year of maximum price. I have little hesitation, there- fore, in giving the following list of years of maximum prices?; but should add that those prior to 1700 are based on the statistics of the production of tin only, supported, however, in the case of 1686 by the fact that a crisis began to develope in that year' and in the case of 1696 by an index number calculated from I W.S. Jewohs, Inve?tigatio? i? Currencly anal Fin?:w?, edition of 188,?, Chart at end o! volume. ? The $tnnnaries by, O.R. Lewis. ' a These dates differ in some e,m.?es from the datcs of "collapses" given by me in British Assoc. l!ep., 1910, p. 683, but the collapse c,'dhmrily came a year or so after the maxhnmn. 4 W. P,. ,?cott. Cot?slil?!iot? a?d Fina?we of Et?.?li.?,"? Joittt $toc;? Com2?nnicz to 1720. ol, I, p. 464.
