360

ADDITION TO GOLD AND SILVER CHAP. XIV.

various small quantities from Saxony , Prussia,and Hanover. The mines in those territoriesin the long period of the dark ages wereslightly and irregularly worked, were subject tofrequent and sometimes long interruptions, andin their best times never yielded such suppliesas they have afforded in more recent years.The silver in the same twenty years which themines of the old continent produced was nearlyon an annual average as follows, viz. Russia .£150,000, Austria £‘200,000, Saxony £100,000,Prussia and Hanover, including the small shareof Brunswick in the Hartz, £110,000, and allthe other mines about £40,000. It will be seenin the tenth chapter of this inquiry, that themines in Germany, excepting those in Saxony ,were very little worked or even known till thelatter end of the period from 800 to 1500;that their greatest produce was but a fewyears before the termination of the period;and if we take the annual average quantityof the precious metals yielded between 800and 1500 at a seventh or an eighth of theaverage of that yielded between 1780 and 1800,when the Russian mines were in active opera-tion, we cannot be very far from the truth, andan approximation to it is all that is attainable inthe present state of our knowledge on this ob-scure subject. If the former calculation assumedin this inquiry be tolerably accurate, that one part