Silver, in performing the function of money, is of great antiquity.  Asia was a commercial country when Europe was a wilderness; and as the East has not changed her habits since the remotest ages, silver alone is the money of that continent, inhabited by more than one-half of the human race, and among whom paper-money is unknown.  The drachma was the principal silver coin among the Greeks, containing sixty-six grains of pure metal, worth about seventeen and a half cents.  It furnished the type of the Roman denarius, containing fifty-eight grains of pure metal, worth about fifteen and a half cents.  The silver mark was imported into England from Denmark by Alfred in A.D. 870; the penny was next issued in 1070; the groat in 1280; then came the shilling in 1503; and the crown made its appearance in 1607.  The earliest silver coin issued in France was the livre, which appeared in 800, of the value of eighty cents.  It steadily depreciated, until, in 1643, it was worth only sixty cents; it then, fell rapidly, until the epoch of the Revolution, when its value was only nineteen cents, and the franc took its place.  The Henri was issued in 1012; the teston appeared in 1499; and the couronne followed in 1610.  The first silver coin issued in the American colonies was in 1652, by Massachusetts, in the shape of pine-tree shillings; silver coins were also issued, at a later period, by the colony of Maryland.  Silver half-dimes were issued by the United States in 1792; dimes appeared in 1793; and half-dollars in 1794.

Silver, in regard to coinage, has exchanged places with gold since 1848.  Since 1726, to the present time, the silver coinage of the French mint has amounted to 7,500,000,000 francs, of which 4,000,000,000 has been issued since 1850; since 1664 the silver coinage of the Russian mint has amounted to 488,000,000 roubles, of which 188,000,000 has been issued since 1850; since 1792 the silver coinage of the United States mint has amounted to $325,968,571, of which $352,741,869 has been issued since 1850; since 1603, the silver coinage of the British mint has amounted to L40,000,000, of which L16,000,000 has been issued since 1850.  The silver coinage of the United States, within the last decade, has amounted to $271,954,638.

Silver, since the commencement of the present century, has trebled its annual product, but its price has declined but twenty-two per cent.  The causes of the depreciation of silver may be thus briefly stated: 

1.  The increased production of the metal; it having increased from $47,000,000 in 1848 to $114,000,000 at the present time.

2.  “Council Drafts,” or bills drawn by Great Britain upon India, have proved a most potent cause in the decline in the value of silver.  The materials which the Indian railways, or the Indian governments require, in order to conduct business, have to be largely imported from England, and therefore, payments are largely liquidated in these bills, which now average $60,000,000 per annum, while formerly they did not average one-fifth of that sum.  These bills supersede silver, and the effect is the same as though the silver mines had been equally increased.  The export of silver to the East has decreased from $80,000,000 in 1847 to $20,000,000 in 1884.