nual valuations made upon oath, according to the actual state of the markets, of all the different sorts of grain in every different county of Scotland. If such direct proof could require any collateral evidence to confirm it, I would observe that this has likewise been the case in France, and probably in most other parts of Europe. With regard to France there is the clearest proof. But though it is certain that in both parts of the United Kingdom grain was somewhat dearer in the last century than in the present, it is equally certain that labor was much cheaper. If the laboring poor, therefore, could bring up their families then, they must be much more at their ease now. In the last century, the most usual day-wages of common labor through the greater part of Scotland were sixpence in summer and fivepence in winter. Three shillings a week, the same price very nearly, still continues to be paid in some parts of the Highlands and Western Islands. Through the greater part of the low country the most usual wages of common labor are now eightpence a day; tenpence, sometimes a shilling about Edinburgh, in the counties which border upon England, probably on account of that neighborhood, and in a few other places where there has lately been a considerable rise in the demand for labor, about Glasgow, Carron, Ayrshire, etc. In England the improvements of agriculture, manufactures and commerce began much earlier than in Scotland. The demand for labor, and consequently its price, must necessarily have increased with those improvements. In the last century, accordingly, as well as in the present, the wages of labor were higher in England than in Scotland. They have risen, too, considerably since that time, though, on account of the greater variety of wages paid there in different places, it is more difficult to ascer-
