Financial Legislation and its Limitations. 



53 



exporters, instead of cashing Council bills at the government 

 finance office in Calcutta or Bombay, would import silver from 

 England. THe Council bills decrease the demand for silver and 

 tend still further to lower its value in England.^" 



§ i6. Monometallists have therefore said that the " disturb- 

 ance " in Indian exchange was not due to the fact that there 

 existed a silver standard in India and a gold one in England at 

 the same time, but was caused by the surplus of imports into 

 England being paid for in India Council bills. There seems to 

 be considerable force in the argument ; which reduces the in- 

 convenience to be laid to the door merely of the difiference in the 

 standards and the effect of the claim that great loss would be 

 obviated by the introduction of bimetallism. For under bi- 

 metallism there would still be the same sale of India Council 

 bills as under monometallism ; also, there would be the same 

 preference of the Indian people for the precious metals, the same 

 burying of them in the ground, or carrying of them about in the 

 form of ornaments, and the same excess of exports from India 

 to England over exports from England into India. Those facts 

 apparently account for the principal disturbances of the ex- 

 changes; for, in the long run, so much as is due to the fluctua- 

 tion in the relative exchange value of the different standards 

 must reach speedy compensation, since the ratio between the 

 metals in the two countries must be brought to the same level 

 with that in the world's market. The continual fall of English 

 bills on India, however, was due to the silver standard there, 

 and has been arrested by the gradual introduction of the gold 

 standard since the closing of the India mint to silver in 1893. 



§ 17. Other materialistic standards, which, however, have not 

 entered an experimental stage like the test given to bimetallism 

 by the Latin Union, are symmetallic, joint-metallic, tabular, and 

 multiple. Symmetallism has no less a sponsor than Professor 

 Alfred Marshall. A practical suggestion from such a source 

 should receive the attention which it deserves. He proposed 



The Council 

 bills, the 

 hoarding of 

 gold and silver 

 in India, the 

 excess of trib- 

 ute from 

 India, are 

 independent of 

 the standard 

 of value, and 

 could not be 

 affected by any 

 change of 

 standard. 



^J. Laurence Laughlin, History of Biiiietallisiii in the United States, 

 p. 132; Edward Atkinson, "Report . . . upon the Present Status of Bimet- 

 allism in Europe," 50th Congress, 1st session. Senate Exec. Doc. 34, chart VI. 



167 



