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Alexander von Humboldt: „Humbolt on the Precious Metals“, in: ders., Sämtliche Schriften digital, herausgegeben von Oliver Lubrich und Thomas Nehrlich, Universität Bern 2021. URL: <https://humboldt.unibe.ch/text/1838-Ueber_die_Schwankungen-08-neu> [abgerufen am 16.04.2024].
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| Titel | Humbolt on the Precious Metals | ||||
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| Jahr | 1839 | ||||
| Ort | Devizes | ||||
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Nachweis in: The Devizes & Wiltshire Gazette 24:1203 (31. Januar 1839), [o. S.].
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| Sprache | Englisch | ||||
| Typografischer Befund | Antiqua; Spaltensatz; Auszeichnung: Schriftgradvergrößerung. | ||||
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|Seitenumbruch|
—In a tractupon the fluctuations in the production of
gold, recently putforth by M. Von Humboldt, the following facts are
given:—“We learn from the acute researches of Boekh, how
on theopening of the East by the Persian wars, and by the expeditionof the great Macedonian to India, gold gradually accumulatedin European Greece, so that in the time of Demosthenes, forexample, the
precious metals had sunk to a fifth of the valuewhich they had in the
days of Solon. The stream then ranfrom east to west, and so copious was
the influx of gold, thatits relative value to silver, which in the time
of Herodotus, was13 to 1. was at the death of Alexander, only as 10 to 1.
Theless universal were the communications of trade in the ancientworld, the greater and more sudden must have been the altera-tions in the relative value of gold and silver. Thus, in conse-quence of
local accumulations of the precious metals, we findthat in Rome, just
after the conquest of Syracuse, gold was tosilver as 17 1-7 to 1:
whereas, under Julius Cæsar, its relativevalue was, for some time,
but as 8 1-¾ to 1. The less the quan-tity of the precious metals
actually existing in a country,the more easily can a sudden influx of
them occasion these ex-cessive variations of their value. The civilized
world is at pre-sent assured of stability in the value of the precious
metals, bythe extent and rapidity of the commerce which establishes
theirequilibrium, and by the great quantities of gold and silver al-ready collected. After the revolution in Spanish America, theannual production of the precious metals fell, for some yearsto
one-third of its former amount, yet the oscillations of theirrelative
value, during that period, were slight, and hardly as-cribable to the
decreased production.” The writer further statesthat the mass of
the precious metals brought to Europe from thediscovery of America till
the outbreak of the Mexican revolu-tion, was 10,400,000 Castilian marks of
gold, (worth about threehundred millions sterling,) and 533,700,000 marks
of silver;together worth 5,940 millions of piastres. The silver takenfrom the American mines in the above-mentioned period wouldbe, when refined, sufficient to form a ball, or solid globe, ofpure
silver, eighty nine feet in diameter. The produce of theRussian gold
mines in 1837 was valued at £800,000. In theUnited States, the
production of gold increased from 1824 to1834—from the value of
5,000 to that of 898,000 dollars; sincethat time it has considerably
declined. The gold was foundchiefly in North Carolina and Georgia. The
amount of theprecious metals drawn from the mines of Siberia and of
theUnited States are inconsiderable in comparison with that fromthe mines of Mexico and Peru; yet they are sufficient to dis-prove the supposition formerly entertained, that large depositswere
confined to tropical countries.
Humbolt on the Precious Metals.