the ratio sets in with the new gold influx. Page 182 The ratio rises above the 15.5 of the French law, and the profit on the importation and coining of silver vanishes. Its place is taken by a corresponding profit on the importation and coinage of gold. The fourteen years during which the ratio remained above the legal 15 1⁄2 witnessed the importation into France of a total net (or balance) of gold to the amount of 135 millions sterling, and a total net or balance of exportation of silver of 66 2⁄3 millions sterling. The coincidence of actual fluctuation will best be seen by the graphic representation of it in the table. With 1865 the final and, so far as the nineteenth century is concerned, the fatal change of the commercial ratio sets in. It sinks persistently and increasingly below the legal 15 1⁄2, in face and spite of the united mintings of the Latin Union, and at once the premium on the importation and coinage of gold changes into one on silver. From 1865 to 1875, one year before the abandonment of the coinage of the 5-franc piece and the consequent relinquishment by France of the bimetallic system, her net imports of silver amounted to 56 millions sterling.
As far as these figures of import and export are concerned, they show only the final results of the action of bimetallic law. The metal on whose importation and minting a premium was obtainable was imported, and in large quantities. That is the single fact standing out in large. The reciprocal fact—of a corresponding