252 Gold Currency in India. 



GOLD CURRENCY IN INDIA. 



BY JOSEPH NEWTON. 



The recent introduction, under warrant of Government, of a 

 gold currency throiighout the three Presidencies of British 

 India, is an event of sufficient importance to justify some 

 remark. The innovation is one which must create consider- 

 able excitement among the -native inhabitants, who have 

 always entertained a very strong prejudice in favour of silver 

 money. That that excitement will be of short duration, and 

 that the prejudice will soon die a natural death, may be fore- 

 told without much prescience, and without a shadow of a 

 chance of the non-fulfilment of the prophecy. 



The advantages likely to arise from the existence of a gold 

 coinage in India had indeed forced themselves upon the atten- 

 tion of such of the wealthy and more intelligent natives as 

 were engaged in the transactions of commerce, long before 

 the order in council legalized its use in our Indian possessions. 

 The Government, therefore, in admitting gold coins to a legal 

 position, have only recognized actual facts, and inaugurated a 

 financial reformation which growing commerce and enlarged 

 experience had proved to be not only expedient but absolutely 

 necessary. It is not a theoretical crotchet, but the enligh- 

 tened recognition of a want and the application of a means of 

 supplying it. The change would probably have been effected 

 at an earlier date, but for the circumstance that the coined 

 sovereign and half-sovereign do not exactly tally with any 

 combination of silver coins circulating in India. The alterna- 

 tives presented for overcoming this inconvenience were to 

 disregard the relative difference of value between the rupee 

 and the sovereign, or else to remodel the silver coinage of that 

 country, and make it harmonize in its divisions with our own 

 gold currency. In the latter case the serious evil would have 

 had to be encountered of inciting much popular discontent, if 

 not of something worse, and therefore the idea was necessarily 

 •abandoned. It remained to adopt the former, or to leave 

 things as they were. Thanks principally to Sir Charles Tre- 

 velyan, the late financial secretary to the Government of 

 Bengal, the determination was arrived at to make the sove- 

 reign and the half-sovereign current at the value of ten and 

 five rupees respectively, and thus to confer, apparently, a favour 

 upon the present holders of silver money. 



The legalization of a gold currency throughout the Presi- 

 dencies cannot be construed, by any perversity of reasoning or 

 ingenuity of argument, into an arbitrary interference with the 



