400 DR. BABASAHEB AMBEDKAR : WRITINGS AND SPEECHES
and report what should be the relative weights in the........gold and silver coins, and to arrange the details by which the monetary systems of the different countries might be fixed, upon a single unit decimally subdivided.”* The significance of this Congress can hardly be overlooked. It made a departure. At the former Congresses the question debated was largely one of uniformity in weights and measures. But at this Congress “ that phase of it was subordinated to uniform coinage and was well-nigh laid aside.”† Though the resolution was a departure, it should not have been fraught with serious consequences if the reform had been confined to the question of uniformity of coinage. But there occurred a circumstance which extended its application to the question of currency. When this agitation for uniform coinage grew apace, the French quite naturally wished that their coinage system, which had already been extended over the area comprised by the Latin Union, should be taken as a model to be copied by other countries outside the Union in the interest of uniformity. With this end in view the French Government approached the British Government of the time, but was told in reply that the British Government could not consider the suggestion until France adopted the single gold standard.‡ Far from being taken aback, the French Government, then so anxious to cultivate the goodwill of England, proved so complacent that it felt no compunction in conceding to the British the pre-requisite it demanded, and indeed went so far out of the way, when the Conference met in Paris in 1867, that it actually manoeuvred§ the Assembly into passing a resolution “that for uniform international coinage it was necessary that gold alone should be the principal currency of the world.” So much importance was attached to the question of uniformity of coinage that those who passed the resolution seemed not to have noticed what sacrifice they were called upon to make for its achievement. Perhaps it would be more correct to say that they did not know that they were affecting by their decision the currency system of the world. All they thought they were doing at the time was to promote uniformity of coinage and nothing
*Quoted by Russell, op. cit., p. 25.
† Russell, loc. cit.
‡ Cf. evidence of Prof. Foxwell, Q. 23,876, Royal Commission on Agricultural Depression in England, 1892.
§ For which cf. Russell, op., p. 46.