That is, there were, for ten years, about thirty times as many ounces of silver mined as of gold, and during these years the change in the ratio was so minute that it can only be calculated in small fractions of 1 per cent.  In 1841-50, for the first time since the middle of the sixteenth century, we find the production of gold the greater, that metal being 52.1 per cent. of the total product, and silver but 47.9 per cent.  During the decade the lowest value ratio of silver to gold was 15.70, and the highest 15.93, a variation of only 1.4 per cent.  Then California and Australia poured out their wonderful golden flood, and all the world was changed.  In 1851-55 the gold yield was 77.6 per cent. of the total, and the silver yield 22.4, and for the next five years the change was but .2 of 1 per cent.  In other words, during those ten years the average annual yield of silver was less than 5 ounces to 1 of gold; so if the “overproduction theory” laid down by the Times were correct, gold should have lost—­well, at least 70 per cent. of its value in silver.  The actual variation was from a ratio of 15.98 to one of 15.46, or a relative depreciation of gold of considerably less than 3 per cent.  Now, it is alleged by many who have made a study of prices during that period, that in actual value gold depreciated 25 per cent.; so it is plain that it carried down silver with it, and the only logical explanation is that the mints were equally open to both.

We have seen that in all the century and a half when the mines were pouring forth silver at the rate of from 20 ounces to 1 of gold up to 55 ounces to 1, the greatest variation in their value was less than 9 per cent., and in the twenty years when the silver production was to that of gold as less than 5 ounces to 1, the value of gold produced being more than three times that of silver, their money value varied less than 3 per cent., and yet we are coolly asked to believe that since 1873 silver is to be rated among variable commodities like potatoes, the size of the crop each year determining the value.  Monometallists have had much to say about the relative cheapness of gold during those years, and have laid much stress upon the fact that it was an era of great prosperity and rapid development, with rise of wages and the prices of farm produce.  In this argument they admit three things:  that we have a moral and constitutional right to use the cheaper metal at any time; that we did use gold for all those years simply because it was easier to pay debts with it, that is, it was cheaper, and that the use of the cheaper metal aided greatly in making prosperity.  That is all that any bimetallist claims.  As the entire burden was not then thrown upon silver, we claim that it should not now be thrown upon gold, doubling or trebling the rate of its advancing value; and as the privilege to use the cheaper metal then checked the advance of the dearer and enhanced prosperity, we insist that the system of that time shall be restored.