The fact that in 1597 eggs were double the price in Holborn as compared with the eggs of Godwicke, is one of the incidental proofs of an almost self-evident principle, that commercial intercourse, produced by facilities of communication, is one of the great causes of cheapness arising out of equalisation of prices. But such facilities further lower prices, by stimulating production. It is to be noted, that while the Attorney-General, when in the country, killed his own bullocks and sheep, and had green geese, capons, and chickens in profusion out of his own poultry-yard, he bought his eggs. We have no doubt that his occasional presence at Godwicke encouraged the cottagers in the provision of eggs for the great man’s use. He did not produce them himself, for the carriage to London would have been most costly. But his purchases were irregular. When the family went to Holborn, the eggs had to seek an inferior market. If no one was at hand, the production declined. They did not go to London, to lower the price there, by increasing the supply. Eggs at ten a groat, even, sound cheap. But while Coke bought his eggs at ten a groat, he only paid two shillings a stone for his beef. Ten eggs were, therefore, equivalent to about two pounds of beef. In this month of April, 1850, good eggs may be bought in London at sixteen for a shilling, which shilling would purchase two pounds of beef. Eggs are, therefore, more than one half cheaper in London now than two centuries and a half ago, by comparison with meat. They are far cheaper when we regard the altered value of money. In the days of Queen Elizabeth eggs were a common article of food. We learn from no less an authority than the Chamberlain of a renowned inn in Kent, that the company who travelled with the carriers used eggs plentifully and luxuriously. ‘They are up already, and call for eggs and butter.’ (Henry IV. pt. 1.) But if we infer that the population of London, in those days of supposed cheapness, could obtain eggs with the facility with which we now obtain them, and that the estimated two hundred thousand of that population could call for them as freely as the pack-horse travellers at Rochester,—the inference may be corrected by the knowledge of a few facts, which will show by what means, then undiscovered, a perishable article is now supplied with unfailing regularity, and without any limit but that enforced by the demand, to a population of two millions and a quarter. That such a population can be so supplied without a continuing increase, or a perpetual variation of price, is an Illustration of Cheapness, which involves a view of some remarkable peculiarities of our age, and some important characteristics of our social condition.