276 Gold, Silver and the Coinage oj the Silver Dollar. 



for the world, excepting India, was 6 or 8 to 1.* From the period of 

 Xenophon, in Greece, 350 ft. 0., and for about 500 years of the Ro- 

 man dominance of the civilized world, the general rate of about 10 to 

 1 prevailed. The rates were, at times, and in some countries, consid- 

 erably varied, by both higher and lower relative values. On Caesar's 

 return from his conquest of Gaul, B. O. 51, the amount of captured 

 treasure, in gold, brought by him to Rome, reduced the ratio to 7 1-2 

 to l.f In the time of Theodosius the Younger, 412 A. D., thesrate 

 had risen to 18 to 1.% These variations, however, appear to have 

 been comparatively temporary; the general progress being to a grad- 

 ual widening of the relative value. From the ninth to the middle of 

 the sixteenth century, the prevailing rates were about 11 and 12 to 

 l.§ After the opening of the mines of Potosi, about 1545, the pre- 

 ponderance of silver became so great as still further to widen the dif- 

 ference by gradual appreciation to 14 and 15 to 1, which rates were 

 held up to about the close of the last century. In 1791, Hamilton, 

 after careful study of the subject, recommended congress to establish 

 our coinage at the rates of 15 to 1 in the coinage of the United States, 

 which was done; and these rates remained our legal valuation of the 

 two metals, until 1834. 



In 1803, France established her mint ratio at 15.5 to 1, with free 

 coinage, which rates became those of most of the States of Europe: 

 and they became the basis of the international compact called the Latin 

 Union, formed in 1865. France had kept her mints open to the coin- 

 age of both metals for seventy years, at these rates, very greatly to the 

 benefit of the world's commerce, no doubt, in the steadiness of value 

 which was thereby given to both the money metals as measures of value. 

 By the formation of the Latin Union it was sought to perpetuate the 

 benefits of the free coinage of both metals. 



England had, in 1816, established for herself the single gold standard, 

 using silver only as a subsidiary coinage. England's great colony, 

 India, had (as she always had) an exclusively silver standard. London 

 became the chief mart of the world, where silver was sold and bought 

 at a price. That price, however, fluctuated within extremely narrow 

 limits, owing to the fact that the free coinage of France offered to all 

 holders her mint terms of 15.5 to 1, for either metal. 



♦Faucher. Remarks on the Production of the Precious Metals. London, 1853. 



' + Lord Liverpool. Letter to the King. London, 1880. p. 285. 

 t Faucher, p. 12. 



§ Faucher, p. 13. See, also, Vaughan, Coins and Coinage. 



