In Europe, also, the obtaining of the precious metals during the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries took a great stride, especially in Germany;(839) but, on the other hand, the Spanish gold and silver mines were closed in 1535 by a law. In the seventeenth century, there was another lull, followed, at the end of the eighteenth, by a second period of activity which has not yet closed. The great development of the production of gold in the Ural mines since 1819, and in the Altai mines since 1829,(840) the revival of the production of silver in the old Spanish mines since 1835,(841) and Pattinson’s discovery, by means of which the poorest lead ores containing silver may be refined, are here of great importance.(842) Shortly before 1848, it was estimated that all the mines of the old world produced annually about 274,000 kilogrammes of silver, and 56,000 kilogrammes of gold, with an aggregate value of over 69,000,000 thalers.(843)(844) Section CXXXVII. Revolution In Prices At The Beginning Of Modern History. The mere discovery of new and richer mines need not, of itself, lower the price of the precious metals. Their price depends on their cost of production; and it may be very much increased, even under the most favorable natural conditions, by the unskillfulness of labor, the dearness of the means of subsistence, of machinery and of auxiliary substances, by insecurity to property or to the person; by war, oppressive taxes(845) etc. The new mines can produce a decline in the price of the precious metals only to the extent that, for the same amount of capital and labor expended, they, spite of all such deductions, produce a greater result.(846) I opine that the price of metallic money, since the discovery of America, has diminished until the present time in the ratio of from three to four to one.(847) The prices of wheat in France, from 1800 to 1850, were about seven times as great as in the second half of the fifteenth century; and in England about six times as great. But, it is not to be overlooked here, how wheat may have grown dearer in itself (_an sich_) and how gold declined considerably less than silver. True, this decline of the precious metals was not an entirely steady one. We meet at the beginning of the modern era with a real revolution in prices. The prices of rye, in lower Saxony, from 1525 to 1550, were twice as high as from 1475 to 1500. According to Garnier, the French prices of wheat, from 1450 to 1500, were, on an average, 408 francs of the present time per _setier_; from 1501 to 1520, 5 francs; from 1522 to 1540, 11.26 francs; from 1541 to 1560, 11.69 francs; from 1561 to 1580, 21.33 francs; from 1581 to 1600, 32.51 francs; during the first half of the seventeenth century, 22.77 francs; in the second half, 26.83 francs; from 1701 to 1750, 19.64 francs. Similarly in England, where wheat cost, from 1560 to 1600, 2.64 times as much as from 1450 to 1500.(848)