A RETURN TO THE GOLD STANDARD 601
legal tender it had to provide for the necessary addition to the currency, and this it thought could best be done by Government having the power to coin rupees. Fortunately for the Government the occasion for an addition did not arise for some time, till 1898,and there was therefore no necessity to exercise, that power. But when such an occasion did arise the Government, as was pointed out before, refused to exercise that power—and held to the view that the additions to Indian currency, instead of being made by further coinage of rupees, should be made by an influx of gold. The government was the strongest opponent of Mr. Lindsay, who was then agitating that it was safe and economical to compel it to make the necessary additions by under taking to coin rupees. It was to adjudicate in the dispute between the Government of India on the one hand and Mr. Lindsay on the other, the former desiring additions by gold coinage and the latter by rupee coinage, that the Fowler Committee was called into being. If the Government was anxious to add to the currency by coining more rupees rather than by the influx of gold, there was no necessity to appoint the Fowler Committee, Such a power had already been given to it by the Hershell Committee. It was because the Government did not want to exercise that ill-charged power that an appeal to a new Committee became necessary. Faced with this immediate problem of how best to expand the currency in relief of monetary stringency, the Committee had solved it in one part of its Report by prescribing that gold should be made legal tender, so that any debtor who was unable to find rupees could have the option of paying his creditors in gold. If gold was allowed to be the general medium of exchange, was not the proposal to coin rupees a superfluous one, quite uncalled for?
Thirdly, could the proposal to coin rupees as a means of building up a gold reserve be justified as calculated to maintain the value of the rupee ? The one thing essential to the maintenance of the value of the rupee was a limitation on its issue. The, Committee talked in a very learned manner about the shilling as being maintained in value in consequence of a limitation in its issue. But did it understand how the shilling was maintained limited in quantity ? If it is true that it is not the limit on legal tender, but the limit on the total volume, that maintains the value of the shilling, why is not the shilling issued in unlimited quantities ? The manufacture of the shilling is profitable in the same way as is the manufacture of the rupee. Why does not