A RETURN TO THE GOLD STANDARD 583
of India again asked the Secretary of State to approach the Treasury for its sanction.* The Treasury on this occasion presented the Secretary of State† with two alternatives :
(1) That a branch of the Royal Mint be established at Bombay solely for the purpose of coining gold into sovereigns, and exclusively under its control; or (2) that the control of the Mint at Bombay should be entirely transferred to it. Neither of the two alternatives was acceptable to the Government of India ; and the Secretary of State, as a concession to Indian sentiment, sanctioned the issue of a ten-rupee gold coin from the Indian Mint. The Government of India preferred this solution to that suggested by the Treasury, but desired that the matter be dealt with afresh by the Chamberlain Commission then sitting. That Commission did not recommend a gold Mint,‡ but saw no objection to its establishment provided the coin issued was a sovereign, and if the coinage of it was desired by Indian sentiment and if the Government did not mind the expense of coinage.§ This view of the Commission carried the proposition no further than where it was in 1900, until the war compelled the Government to open the Bombay Mint for the coinage of gold as a branch of the Royal Mint. But it was again closed in 1919. Its reopening was recommended by the Currency Committee of 1919,¶ and so enthusiastically was the project received that an Honourable Member of the Supreme Council took the unique step of tempting the Government into adopting that recommendation by an offer to increase the Budget Estimates under “Mint” to enable the Government to bear the cost of it. The Government, however, declined the offer with thanks so we have in India the singular spectacle of a country in which there was a Gold Mint even when Gold was not legal tender, as was the case between 1835-93, while there is no gold Mint, when gold is legal tender, as has been the case since 1893. Just what an open Mint can do in the matter of promoting the ideal of the Fowler Committee it is difficult to imagine; but the following extracts from the evidence of a witness (Mr. Webb), than whom there was no greater advocate of an open gold Mint before the Chamberlain Commission, help to indicate just what is expected from a gold Mint.
- See Commons Paper 495, of 1913 ; p. 57.
† Ibid, p. 64.
‡Report, sees. 69-71.
§ The Commission recommended that if a gold Mint was not established in India Government should renew the notification withdrawn in 1906 to receive refined gold on suitable terms.—Report, sec. 72.
¶ Report, par. 67.