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If, when the annual consumption has become equal to the annual

importation, the annual importation should gradually diminish,

the annual consumption may, for some time, exceed the annual

importation. The mass of those metals may gradually and

insensibly diminish, and their value gradually and insensibly

rise, till the annual importation becoming again stationary, the

annual consumption will gradually and insensibly accommodate

itself to what that annual importation can maintain.

_Grounds of the suspicion that the Value of Silver still

continues to decrease._