a divergence from the legal ratio by lowering gold, there was another which occasioned a rise of silver. Under the influence of various circumstances, too long to enumerate, the needs of the extreme East had grown in unusual proportions, and as silver is alone in favour there, it was exported in enormous masses. There was a premium on silver to the extent of 8 per mille, and it disappeared almost completely from circulation, yielding place to gold.
"Preoccupied by the situation the Government charged a commission to study the measures to be taken. Its labours are summed up in the report of Page 189 M. de Bosredon (1857). After examining the system tending to preserve silver money intact by lowering the value of gold money, and conversely the system tending to the adoption of the gold standard by reducing the silver money to the state of billon, the commission did not decide between them. It confined itself, in fact, to counselling the Government to a transitory step—the raising of the export duties on silver.... The exportation of silver, therefore, continued; and if the disappearance of 5-franc pieces was not remarked, because they were replaced by gold, it was not the same with the scarcity of pieces of a smaller value employed in petty payments.
"Being informed of the obstruction to retail commerce by complaints carried before the Senate, and instructed by the example of Switzerland, which had in 1860 reduced the standard of its divisional money, the Minister of Finance appointed a commission, 1861, to study the remedy to be applied to the evil. This