Nothing was done at that time. Events drifted till 1864, when the lack
of small change had become so serious that the Government brought
a bill before the Corps Legislatif authorizing the lowering of the
fineness of all the silver coins less than five francs to 835 instead
of 900 thousandths. This was in effect the same thing that we had
done in 1853, when we converted all our silver coins less than one
dollar into token money. The proposal was more shocking to the French
legislator than to the American, for the reason that the franc was the
monetary unit sanctioned by the law of 1803, and this monetary unit was
one of the very things to be lowered. The Legislature recoiled, but
it sustained the lowering of the pieces smaller than one franc. The
difficulty could not be removed by such homœopathic treatment, and as
the same difficulty existed in the neighboring countries of Belgium
and Switzerland, a convention was called for the purpose of adopting
some common steps for relief. Italy also was induced to join, and soon
afterwards Greece. France considered it admissible to do by treaty what
she had not been willing to do by direct act. By treaty dated December
23, 1865, these four countries adopted their present token coinage of
silver and limited its legal-tender faculty to fifty francs. This was
the origin of the so-called Latin Monetary Union.