488 REPORT—1890. 
DRAFT PROPOSAL FOR AN OFFICIAL INDEX-NUMBER. 
1. Appoint a Special Commission to collect prices of such principal 
articles of production and consumption as may, from time to time, be 
directed by Order in Couucil. 
2. Commission to have power to appoint inspectors of prices in towns, 
markets, and other places; and to direct by Order in Council that persons 
buying and selling in these towns, &c., such articles as may be prescribed, 
are to make returns in the prescribed form to the inspector so appointed 
or direct to the Commission. 
3. Such persons failing to make a return, or making a false ge 
to be liable to a penalty of 201. on conviction, ke, 
4, The Commission shall publish, from time to time, in the Gazette, 
in prescribed form, the prices so obtained. 
5. The Commission shall also publish on January 1 next, or on such 
other date as may be fixed by them after the commencement of this part 
of the Act, upon such evidence as shall appear to them satisfactory, a 
statement of the average prices of each of the specified articles for the 
ten years immediately preceding, and for each of these years; and the 
prices so declared shall be taken to be the par prices for the purpose of 
this Act. 
6. In January of each year following, the Commission shall publish 
the prices for the previous year for the same articles as ascertained in the 
manner prescribed by the Commission under this Act; and shall also 
publish in the prescribed form a table of the proportion of these prices to 
the par prices, each of the par prices being reckoned for this purpose as 
100, and the proportion in each case being stated in the form of the pro- 
portion to a hundred. The sum of these proportions shall also be stated. 
The table may be divided into parts, and the sum of the proportions in 
each part stated separately. The sum of the par prices, each reckoned 
as 100, shall be called the par index-number, and the sum of the propor- 
tions in each year shall be called the proportionate index-number for 
each year; and the sum of the par prices for each part, and of the pro- 
portions in each year, shall be called the par index-number, and the 
proportionate index-number for each part. 
7. It shall be lawful in all contracts for payments in money to express 
that the payment is to be made for a given year in the proportionate 
index-number for that year, either for the whole of the said table or for a 
part of it, and thereupon payment may be made in such sum of sterling 
money as will correspond in respect of the sum contracted to be paid to 
the proportion which the proportionate index-number bears to the par 
index-number. It shall also be lawful in all such contracts to agree that 
the actual payment to be made in a given year shall be a sum of sterling 
money, bearing the same proportion to the sum named in the contract as 
the proportionate index-number for the said year bears to the propor- 
tionate index-number for the year in which the contract was made. 
8. New articles may be introduced into the list and the table, from 
time to time, by Order in Council, which order shall declare the par price 
and index-number, and thereupon the amended list and table shall be 
used for all purposes as if it were the original list and table. 
