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international payment, is that the unit of internal currency should be stably related to a definite gold value ?—I do not quite accept that; it may be stable for international purposes ; it might not be stable for internal purposes.
I do not think I managed to make my question quite clear. I understand what is desired by you in your recommendations is that the unit of currency which is used internally should be stably related to a gold value ?—I am really more for the use of gold. I am opposed to any kind of system which will economise gold under the present circumstances. Because I think that economy of gold is incompatible with security of price. My standpoint is very different from the standpoint of other people. I may be a little barbarous in my view.
Not at all. Let us examine what your real idea is. What is your ideal to be attained in the organisation of the currency of a country ? It is not that the internal unit should be stable in relation to gold ?—Oh yes, it should be stable—not in relation to gold but stable in terms of commodities.
By what methods do you recommend that India’s internal currency should be stabilised, that is, in relation to what, and, secondly, by what methods ?—It should be stabilised more in relation to commodities rather than to gold, which is used only for purposes of internal trade. And I say it should be done by stopping the coinage of rupees altogether, and prescribing the use of gold.
If we reject gold as a standard of reference for the internal currency, what other standard of reference are we to adopt ?—That I have given here. That we should either go to the Compensating Standard of Professor Fisher or to the Tabular Standard of Professor Jevons. If you do not want to use gold and economise gold, then my submission is that you should go to one or other of those two.
I am not sure that I am very intimately acquainted with Professor Fisher’s standard, but are these both the same sort of proposals ?—They are very much the same except that Professor Fisher’s Compensating Standard—they are really what I should say, I mean, the two sides of the same medal,