474 DR. BABASAHEB AMBEDKAR : WRITINGS AND SPEECHES
( b ) Issuing the 20s. notes based on silver, which shall be legal tender.
( c ) Retirement, gradual or otherwise, of the 10s. gold pieces, and substitution of paper based on silver.
(4) Agreement to coin annually a certain quantity of silver.
(5) Opening of English Mints to the coinage of rupees and for coinage of British dollars, which shall be full legal tender in Straits Settlements and other silver-standard Colonies, and tender in the United Kingdom to the limit of silver legal tender.
(6) Colonial action, and coinage of silver in Egypt.
(7) Something having the general scope of the Huskisson plan.
In these negotiations the Treasury again reverted to its old pose. It refused to discuss the conditions requiring a change in the British currency, but argued that the opening of the Indian Mints, if brought about, should be regarded as an adequate “contribution which could be made by the British Empire towards any international agreement with the object of securing” a stable monetary par of exchange between gold and silver,* and the representatives of the United States and France seemed to have concurred in that view. The negotiations, however, failed, because of the firm stand taken by the Government of India. The Government had suffered too long to be the scapegoat of the Treasury. Nor did it see any reason why it should be called upon to pull the chestnuts off the fire for the benefit of France and the United States. In a letter commenting upon the proposals, the Government of India observed†:—
“The changes which are involved in the arrangements proposed to Her Mahesty’s Government are the following : France and the United States are to open their Mints to the free coinage of silver, continuing the free coinage of gold and the unlimited legal tender of coins of both metals, the ratio remaining unchanged in France and being altered in the French ratio of 15½ to 1 in the United States. India is to open
- Cf. letter dated October 16, 1897, to the Foreign Office, P.P.C. 8667 of 1897, p. 15.
† Despatch dated September 16, 1897, to the Secretary of State, ibid, p. 9. Italics not in the original