i84 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



It is not alleged that the Indian Government has violated any contract 

 or stipulation ; but that they "have proved ungenerous employes."* 

 Imix)rtant, however, as this matter doubtless is to those especially in- 

 terested, it is one in which the world at large can not be expected to 

 take much interest. 



In Holland the disturbances assumed to have been occasioned by 

 the decline in the value of silver have attracted public attention to an 

 even greater degree than in England. But even here the disturbances 

 have been mainly restricted to the commercial and financial relations 

 of Holland with her East Indian colonies, Java, Sumatra, and other 

 islands, and have been si)ecially occasioned by the extraordinary fall 

 in recent years in the prices of the principal exports of these islands, 

 namely sugar and coffee. But no commercial fact is capable of more 

 complete demonstration than that the fall in the price of these great 

 staples has been in no way contingent upon any change in the value 

 of silver.f 



Finally, the idea of disturbance in connection with the decline in 

 the value of silver has been and is pre-eminently connected with an 

 annunciation and belief in two pro])ositions : First, that the almost uni- 

 versal decline in the prices of the world's staple commodities since 

 1873 has been occasioned by the fall in the price of silver ; and, sec- 

 ond, that a decline of prices is an evil. The first of these propositions 

 rests upon an assumption which can not be verified by any conclusive 

 evidence whatever ; and, as for the second, if the fall of prices has 

 been mainly due, as has been demonstrated, to natural and permanent 

 causes, namely, the increased power of mankind in the work of pro- 

 duction and distribution ; then the result, by creating a greater abun- 

 dance of all good things, and bringing a larger amount of the same 

 within the reach of the masses for consumption and enjoyment, has 

 been one of the greatest of blessings. 



* It is curious to note that when the rules regulating the pensions of the Indian Civil 

 Service were established in 1863, the Indian Government stipulated that the rupee should 

 not count for more than two shillings, which had been about its equivalent in sterling 

 from time immemorial, even if at any time exchange on England rose to a higher point 

 (as it actually did at one time, in 1801); but, not expecting that the rupee would ever 

 fall in value to any great extent below 2s., or below that par of exchange, they omitted 

 to provide against it. 



f " During the last five years Java has been subject to the most fearful natural calami- 

 ties. They have had a cattle-plague which destroyed almost the whole cattle in parts of 

 the island ; they have had cholera ; they have had earthquakes of an unprecedented char- 

 acter, and they have had further an extraordinary fall in the values of their principal ex- 

 ports, which are sugar and coffee, owing, in the first place, to the competition of beet-root 

 sugar in Europe ; and, in the second place, to the fact that South America has been able 

 to export coffee more favorably than Java ; and to this extent we can trace a loss of £5,- 

 000,000 annually in these two articles. That has been the result in the last five years of 

 natural causes, without any question of currency at all." — Tcatimon}/ o/ Mr. Paul F. Tid- 

 MAN, East India ma-chant. First Report of the British Gold and Silver Commission, 



