on over-supply rather than on demonetization as a sufficient explanation for the depreciation of silver. ¹⁵³ The table is based on figures of M. de Foville of the French Mint, as given by Mr. F. B. Forbes in _The Bimetallist_ of July, 1897, pp. 125–28. ¹⁵⁴ In view of this, it is a matter of some surprise that such an eminent economist as Prof. W. Lexis should have ceased to be bimetallist on the ground that the enormous increase of silver militated against the establishment of a permanently high ratio with gold. Cf. his essay on “The Present Monetary Situation,” in the _Economic Studies of the American Economic Association_, 1896, Vol. I, No. 4, pp. 273–77. The habit of measuring the production of silver in terms of value is no doubt largely responsible for this quite unfounded notion. [Illustration: CHART III: Relative Values and Relative Production of Gold and Silver] Apart from such minor points, the issue was considerably narrowed by the peculiarity of the events of the twenty years preceding and following the year 1873.¹⁵⁵ Compare, it was said, the period commencing with 1848 and ending [pg 80] with the year 1870 with the period following 1870, and there emerges the arresting fact that these two periods, though they have been the opposite of each other with reference to the relative values of the two metals, were alike with reference to the changes in their relative supply. The period between 1870 and 1893 on the side of relative production was marked by the preponderance of silver. The period between 1848 and 1870 is an exact parallel to the above period with respect to changes in the relative supply of the two precious metals, only in this case it was gold that had increased in volume. Now, if it is over-supply that governed the value relations of the two metals in the second period (1870–93) the same should be true of their value relations in the first period (1848–70). Was there, then, a disturbance in the relative values of the two metals in the first period anything like what took place in the second period? It was insisted that the disturbance in the ratios of production of the two metals in the first period was enormously greater than that which occurred in the second period. Indeed, comparatively speaking, the disturbance in the second period was nothing to speak of. And yet their relative (value during the first period was well-nigh constant at the ratio of 1 to 15½, while in the second it fluctuated between 16·10 and 26·75. Those who argued that the value of silver fell after 1873 because of its over-supply were thus faced with the problem as to why the value of gold did not fall when its supply had become so abundant before 1873. The whole controversy was therefore centred into the question as to what could have made this difference in the two situations? If the colossal increase in the production of gold in the first period did not raise the