Note 158-1 — Chapter II

"The falling of rents an infallible sign of the decay of wealth." (Locke.) In England, in 1450, land was bought at "14 years' purchase;" i. e., with a capital = 14 times the yearly rent paid, in 1470, at only "10 years' purchase." (Eden, State of the Poor, III, App., I, XXXV.) This was, doubtless, a consequence of the civil war raging in the meantime. The American war (1775-82) depressed the price of land in England to "23¼ years' purchase," whereas it had previously stood at 32. (A. Young.) The rent of land, in many places in France, declined from 10,000 to 2,000 livres, on account of the many wars during Louis XIV.'s reign. (Madame de Sévigné's Lettres, 25 Dec, 1689.) Even in 1677, it was only one-half of its former amount (King, Life of Locke, I, 129.) The whole Bekes county (comitat) in Hungary was sold for 150,000 florins under Charles VI.; after the unfortunate war with France. (Mailath, Oesterreich, Gesch., IV, 523.) Compare Cantillon, Nature du Commerce, 248. In Cologne, a new house was sold in the spring of 1848 for 1,000 thalers, the site of which alone had cost 3,000 thalers; and there are six building lots which formerly cost over 3,000 thalers, now valued at only 100 thalers. (von Reden, Statist. Zeitschr., 1848, 366.) On the other hand, Napoleon's war very much enhanced English rents (Porter, Progress of the Nation, II, 1, 150 ff.), because it affected England's national husbandry principally by hindering the importation of the means of subsistence. (Passy, Journal des Economistes, X, 354.)