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SILVER. g. The relative value of gold and silver, as will appear from the following statement, has varied considerably at different times. According to the present regulations m the British mint, a pound of standard gold is coined mto 44 A guineas : a pound weight of standard silver is comet into 62 shillings; and a guinea is current for 21 shillings. These particulars enable us to calculate the relative value of gold to silver, if we neglect the alloy in the coins; for 414 guineas are equivalent in value to ISC') sixpences, and 62 shillings being equal to 124 sixpences, the value ot gold is to that of silver as 1869 to 124, or as 15 T 5 T to - This would accurately express the relative valuesof t u ' two metals, if the quantity of alloy in a pound weight ot standard in each bore the. same proportion to the^wlmle, which is not the case. In a pound weignt of standard gold at the British mint, one-twelfth is alloy: m a pound weight of standard silver, it is & ; and the relative value of pure gold to pure silver, according to these regu a- tions, and the established currency between coins ot the two metals, is as 1to 1. One of the earliest ac counts of the relative value of gold and silver we possess is that of Herodotus, who informs us, that in Persia am Greece, it was as 13 to 1. Plato, who flourished about fifty years after Herodotus, asserts, in his Hipparchus, that the value of gold in Greece was to that of silver as 12 to 1 *■ Menander, who was born about the year 341 before the Christian era, estimates the value of gold to that of silver so low, as 10 to 1. According to Pliny, the relative value of the two metals in llome, was at one pe riod as high as 14*5 to I ; but this did not continue long ; for we find, in the conditions on which the Homans made peace with the Jitolians, about 1S9 years before the Christian era, that they coincided with the Greeks in esti mating * I’latuiiLs Opera, t. iii. p. 231. edit. H. Stcnli.