TOWARDS A GOLD STANDARD 483
The Treasury sent a trenchant rejoinder, in which it remarked:—
“Indian currency needs are provided from other sources, and there is no real demand for the local coinage of sovereigns …… My Lords cannot believe that the position of the Gold Standard in India will be strengthened, or public confidence in the intention of the Government confirmed, by providing machines for obtaining gold coin …… The large measure of confidence already established is sufficiently indicated by the course of exchange since the Committee’s Report and still more by the readiness with which gold has been shipped to India ……”
That the Treasury acted “in a spirit of scarcely veiled hostility to the whole proposal” is unmistakable. But it cannot be denied that the Treasury used arguments that were perfectly sound. It was inconsequential to the working of the gold standard whence the coined sovereigns came. So long as a Mint was open to the free coinage of sovereigns the Indian gold standard would have been complete irrespective of the location of the Mint. Indeed, to have obtained coined sovereigns from London would have not only sufficed, but would have been economical. The anxiety displayed by the government was not, however, on account of the want of a gold Mint. Indeed, so slight was its faith in the necessity of it that in view of the opposition of the Treasury it gracefully consented to drop the proposal. What troubled it most was the peculiar position of the rupee in the new system of currency. Throughout the despatch of the Government of India there ran a strain of regret that it could not see its way to demonetize the rupee and to assimilate the Indian currency to that prevailing in England. A general perusal of the despatch leaves the impression that though it recommended the assimilation of the Indian currency to that of France and the United States, it did so not because it thought that their systems furnished the best model, but because it believed that a better one was not within reach. Having regard to the accepted view of the French and the United States currency systems, it was natural that the Government of India did not feel very