450 DR. BABASAHEB AMBEDKAR : WRITINGS AND SPEECHES
the future is involved in uncertainty.’*
In the face of such a situation nothing would have been more natural than to expect the Government precipitating into some kind of action to save itself, if not others, from an impending calamity. Far from taking immediate steps, the Government not only failed to take any initiative, but showed, when pressed by the Bengal Chamber of Commerce to act upon the foregoing resolution, a surprising degree of academic somnolence only to be expected from an uninterested spectator. No doubt the proposal of the Bengal Chamber was defective in that it did not suggest the opening of the Indian Mints to the coinage of gold. The Government of India was sharp enough to fasten upon this defect. It made plain to the Chamber that if it had proposed the free coinage of gold.
“such a recommendation would not have been open to the objections that appear fatal, in limine, to the adoption of the resolution actually adopted...... viz. to close the Mints temporarily to the free coinage of the one metal into legal-tender money, without simultaneously opening them to the free coinage of the other into legal tender money.’
Did it, then, adopt the proposal of Colonel Smith, which contained such a recommendation ? Not at all! Why did it not, then, adopt a remedy to which it saw no objections ? The reason was that it had arrived at a different diagnosis of the causes of the monetary disturbances. To the Government the possibilities of explaining “the disturbance in the equilibrium of the precious metals” seemed to be many and varied.† (1) The value of gold being unchanged, the value of silver had fallen ; (2) the value of silver being unchanged, the value of gold had risen ; (3) the value of gold had risen, and the value of silver had fallen ; (4) the value of both metals had risen, but the value of gold more than that of silver; (5) the value of both metals had fallen, but the value of silver more than that of gold. In the midst of such possibilities, marked, more by pedantry than logic, the Government warned the currency reformers that
“the character of the remedies indicated, if the disturbance is found to be due to a rise in the value of gold, will obviously
- P. 93.
† Cf. The Resolution of the Government of India relating to the Depreciation in the Value of Silver, dated September 22, 1876, par. 6, Commons Paper 449 of 1893.