From the time of Solon for a period of about 200 years prices were continually rising, and though they fluctuated with the productiveness of the seasons they were never so low again as in the time of Solon. Corn which at one period was at one drachma rose in two centuries to treble that price, and in one century more to five times as much as at the first. The advance in prices was peculiarly rapid after the concentration of the contents of the chief mines in the hands of the Roman Government.

From the death of Augustus the conversion of the precious metals into coin had been extended and almost universally prevailed. The founding of Constantinople tended rather to draw the precious metals to the eastern side of Europe, thereby weakening the industry and productive power of Italy. The silver mines found in Germany in the tenth and following centuries gradually increased the quantity of money and the price of necessaries before the discovery of America, which probably had the effect of checking the discovery in France as it had in other parts of the Continent.

By the statistics that have been collected of the amounts of silver and gold that were taken to the Mints in earlier times it appears that in the 237 years from 1272 to 1509 the silver amounted to £1,185,198, and the gold to £446,908 in the money of our time, by which it is seen that the amount of coined gold and silver money at the time of the discovery of America was very minute when compared with the quantity which has been brought into circulation since, and when compared also with the amount in existence when the Roman empire was at the height of its grandeur and power. There is consequently reason to suppose that the additional quantity of gold and silver brought into circulation between the years 800 and 1500 was not much if any more than was required to keep the stock of the last of those years to as high a standard as it had reached in the first of them; and it is estimated that the quantity must have remained nearly the same from the prices of commodities not having changed. The small quantity of gold and silver in existence during that period may be inferred from the very small portion of coined money which was issued from the several Mints after the operations of coining were performed exclusively by the chiefs of the several kingdoms, or by those to whom that privilege was granted.

It is estimated that during the period from about the year 800 to 1500 the mines of the ancient Continent produced far less of the precious metals in the average of the seven centuries than they did in the century closing in 1800. The average product of the mines of Europe including the mines of Russia in Asia did not in the last twenty years of the eighteenth century amount to more gold than is equal to £200,000. Of this more than half was produced by the Russian mines which afforded none before 1704. The greater part of the remainder was yielded by Austria, and the rest by Saxony, Prussia, and Hanover.

In the same twenty years the silver produced on an annual average was as follows: - Russia £150,000, Austria £200,000, Saxony £100,000, Prussia and Hanover, including the small share of Brunswick in the Hartz £110,000, and all the other mines about £40,000.

It is believed that the crusades which was the means of moving the population and riches of the western world to the limits of Asia caused an influx of the precious metals to the Greek empire, some portion of which probably was brought back again to the west by the commerce of the Venetians, Genoese, and Pisans in exchange for the commodities which those divisions of Europe produced.

We are informed that during the middle ages, when gold in Asia and Africa was worth no more than eight or nine times its weight in silver, it was worth in Europe, and especially in the west from ten to thirteen times its weight.

The plunder of Constantinople by the Venetians and other of the Crusaders we are told probably transferred more of the precious metals to western Europe than all the commerce of the centuries that preceded it. Gibbon says that the Emperor Alexius paid to the Marquis of Montserrat the enormous sum of 1600 pounds of gold, and that on the second capture, when the city was delivered over to the allied armies, the booty of the captors which was brought to the public account besides what was recently appropriated by individuals amounted to £800,000. It is not improbable that the soldiers of the cross may have carried to the east more of the precious metals than ever returned to that part of Europe.

In the early progress of civilisation the system of agriculture must necessarily be bad. With bad agriculture the variations in productiveness of different years will be greater than in an improved state of culture. The great fluctuations in the value of corn in former ages have risen from a want of capital by which a part of the surplus produce of the most productive years might be retained to meet the exigencies of following years of scarcity. In those times there was no other kind of wealth in existence beyond that which could be saved from the surplus produce of the earth. Complaints heard in later times of a want of currency in countries are based on this fallacy. If there is no surplus wealth or capital to exchange for it how can there be currency ?

With no purchasers to buy surplus produce and store it, its value would obviously fall until it scarcely repaid the labour that had been expended on the crops.

The latest revolution in the currency systems of the leading nations of Europe, England excepted, which commenced virtually from the moment France lost Alsace and Lorraine, created a greater disturbance in the trade of the world than had been experienced since the effects produced by the discovery of the American mines, and as we write a system is passing away, swept before one of those irresistible waves which through a long period of time has been gathering strength until with its own weight it breaks and sweeps away the old landmarks and begins to groove out for itself a new channel. We refer to the demonetization of silver by Germany and Holland, a movement which had its origin in the power given to the Germans to adopt the gold standard by means of the war indemnity money paid by France. Our immediate object here is not so much to trace out the effects produced at once upon neighbouring nations having a silver standard by the decision of Germany to adopt gold, as to endeavour to reason out and forecast the ultimate consequences to the various currency systems of Europe which is likely to result from the course pursued by the Germans. We will, however, briefly advert to some of the circumstances which arose from the great disturbance occasioned by Germany demonetizing her silver currency at a time when the trade of the world was stagnant.