[Footnote 14: By the action of bimetallic law is meant any action of bad money on good--of worn money on new--of higher rated (or lower valuable) money on lower rated (or higher valuable) money. It does not at all matter, especially in cases of debasement, whether there are two metals in the process or only one or even three. If a currency is silver, and part of it is debased and part left good there is bimetallic action, and the good disappears. Of course, the case is argumentatively and for deduction's sake much clearer if a currency is truly bimetallic in the ordinary sense.] CHAPTER III From the End of the First Cycle of American Influences to the Present Day, 1660-1894 Up to the close of the eighteenth century the production of silver shows a remarkable steadiness and uniformity--the decrease on the yield of the Potosi mines being compensated by the increased output of Mexican silver. In the condition of the output of gold, however, there is a perceptible alteration, due to the increasing imports of that metal from Brazil. The change in the relative production of the two metals appears from the table on p. 155. The effect on the ratio of this increased relative and absolute amount of gold was, however, considerably diminished by the increasing favour with which gold came to be regarded for currency purposes, from the end of the seventeenth century onwards. In general terms this process or tendency in favour of gold continued through the first sixty years of the eighteenth century, at which time the proportion of gold to the production of the two metals had risen as high as 40 per cent., whereas in 1600 it had only formed 17.2 per cent. of the total. [Sidenote: PRODUCTION OF THE PRECIOUS METALS, 1660-1893] From 1760, however, such relative preponderance of gold was not maintained. It gradually sank back until, by the beginning of the present century, it had come to form only a little over 23 per cent. of the total. From 1820 to 1840 a recovery took place, but it was not until the Californian gold discoveries that the second great disturbance in the relative production of gold and silver took place; such a disturbance, i.e., as can be fitly compared with that which the sixteenth century witnessed.