This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1877 edition. Excerpt: ...I am now referring to the proposal to make gold the sole standard, and to reduce our rupees to the position of subsidiary currency only. By declaring the sovereign sole tender, and refusing to coin silver, you may force gold into India; but if gold came in sufficient quantity to satisfy the requirements of trade, there would be no room for silver. The rupees might continue to circulate, but they would not take their value from gold unless they could be exchanged for gold. The amount of rupees in circulation is too great to allow of their sinking at once to the place of subsidiary currency. If gold be introduced at once, silver must be displaced at once: there would not be employment for both. Is the displaced silver to be thrown on the hands of the stockholder? If not, Government must consent to receive it back from him in exchange for gold, for there would be no outlet for it elsewhere. Government would have to take the silver and sell it for gold; but surely a great deal of waste and inconvenience would have been saved had Government, in the first instance, declared the rupee debt to bear a gold valuation. And this is, in fact, what Government would have to do if it changed the standard. The value of the rupee might be upheld by retaining it as a standard of value collaterally with gold, but so much less gold would come. The process of changing the standard would be protracted over a period of indefinite length; and meanwhile all trade transactions would be seriously obstructed by the strain to obtain new medium and by the consequent high charges for money. It may be convenient to consider here what supply of gold would be required for an immediate change of standard. The Secretary of State's drawings stopped and the Indian mints closed against...