It changes in volume as does a glacier fed by the snows of many years, not as does a river, filled by a single rainfall.

For a short time after the discovery of America (from 1493 to about 1544) the average coining value[1] of the world's production of gold, nearly all found in America, was about 1-1/2 times as great as that of silver; but thereafter for three centuries from about 1545, the annual value of silver produced was between 1-1/2 to 4 times as great as that of gold, averaging about twice as great.

Silver was the money chiefly in use in the ordinary transactions in all of the principal countries of the world.
Sec.2.

#Gold production, first half of nineteenth century.# We have now to note some great changes in the production of gold in the nineteenth century, changes both absolute and relative to that of silver.

The market ratio of the two metals had been gradually changing before 1792 and continued to change.