TOWARDS A GOLD STANDARD 467
her share in the matter of rehabilitating silver.* This was not the only advantage exacted from a country bound to obey. On the one hand it restrained the Government of India from taking any independent line of action in the matter of currency reform, and on the other such means as were calculated to make good the losses which arose from a depreciating currency were subjected to Parliamentary censure. The House of Commons was twice moved, once in 1877 and again in 1879, to resolve that the Government of India should lower its tariff, ostensibly in the interest of free trade, but really in the interests of relief to the depressed condition of Lancashire. The consequence was that the Government could not tap one important source of its revenue in times of its greatest adversity. The only adequate recompense, the British authorities could have made to a Government so completely paralysed by their dictations, and of whose interests they so loudly claimed to be the lawful trustees, was to have consented to join the bimetallic union, the consummation of which only waited upon their grace. But, as is well known, they did nothing of the kind, so that, after a period of enforced waiting and by no means unavoidable suffering, the Government of India, at the end of 1893, found itself just where it was at the beginning of 1878.
Like all common-sense people who pray and yet do not fail to keep their powder dry, this interval was utilized by the silver-ridden countries, with the exception of the United States, in strengthening their gold basis no less than in attending the deliberation of the Monetary Conferences on the amusing plans for extending the use of silver.† Mr. Goschen, at the Conference of 1878, had quite philosophically remarked that States feared to employ silver because of its depreciation and the depreciation continued because the States feared to employ it. Now, if the first part of the diagnosis was correct, we should have found the States seriously engaged in the task of rehabilitating silver when its price was propped up by the silver legislation of the United States. On the other hand, just so far as the monthly purchases of silver, under the Bland Allison Act of 1878, or the Sherman Act of 1890, held up the price of silver, not only did they not feel anxious to take steps to restore it to its former
- Cf. the speech of Mr. Goschen at the International Monetary Conference of
1878, Third Session. Report of the American Delegates, Senate Executive Document, No. 58, Forty-fifth Congress, Third Session, Washington, 1879, pp. 50-52.
† Cf. for the variety of plans suggested at the Conferences The Report of the American Delegates to the International Monetary Conference of 1892, Washington,