⁸⁹ Cf. Appendix A to the Minute by Sir William Mansfield on Gold Currency for India, H. of C. Return 79 of 1865.
⁹⁰ Resolution in the Financial Department dated February 3, 1866, in the _Fort William Gazette_ of the same date, under Notification No. 592.
⁹¹ For the Report of the Commission, _see_ H. of C. Return 148 of 1868.
For the time being the problem was solved by the natural course of events. But, as subsequent events showed, the change to a gold standard would have been better for India⁹² [pg 48] and would have been welcomed⁹³ in the interest of Europe, which was then suffering from high prices due to the superfluity of gold. At this particular juncture the Government of India was really at the crossing of ways, and could have averted the misfortunes that were to befall it and its people if it had sided with the forces of change and replaced the silver standard by a gold standard, as it could most easily have done. That those in charge of Indian affairs should have thrown the weight of their authority against the change was no dishonest act deserving of reproach,⁹⁴ but it does furnish one more illustration of those disastrous human ways which often lead people to regard the situation in which they live as most secure just when it is most precarious. So secure did they feel about the currency situation that in 1870, when the Mint Law came to be revised and consolidated, they were content, as though nothing had happened or was likely to happen, to allow the silver standard of 1835 to continue pure and unsullied by any admixture of gold.⁹⁵
⁹² It is true Prof. J. E. Cairnes was against the introduction of a gold standard in India; but later he withdrew his objections. Cf. his _Essays in Political Economy_ (London, 1873, pp. 88–90).
⁹³ Cf. J. R. McCulloch, _Dictionary of Commerce_, Ed. 1869, p. 1131.
⁹⁴ Mr. H. B. Russell says that they retained the silver standard because they profited by it on their remittances. Cf. his _International Monetary Conferences_, 1898, p. 32.
⁹⁵ The original mint and coinage bill contained clauses embodying the notification of 1868, compelling the Government to receive sovereigns at Public Treasuries. Cf. _Gazette of India_, Part V, dated July 23, 1870. But such was the degree of indifference shown that they were afterwards dropped by the Select Committee, which preferred to leave the matter to the discretion of the Executive.