30 
iVo/f.s on Indian Currencies. 
[no. 1, NEAV SERIES, 
certain parts of (A) can be made to represent the like parts of (B) 
proportionally. 
Not that it is absolutely necessary that the currency should be of 
metal — it may consist of what apparently has no value, as shells, 
or beans : and it may consist of precious stones, or even of paper 
as far as the home circulation is concerned. 
Mr. Ricardo in 1819 sHggested some such paper plan to the 
famous Bullion Committee, and maii?,tained that the circulation of 
England should consist of nothintg but*- paper and small silver 
tokens, the Bank issuing the paper and being compelled to pay 
its notes above a certain amount (£100 I think) in bullion in- 
stead of coin, and that there should *be no gold coin at all. But 
such currency schemes based upon credit for the purpose of eco- 
nomizing bullion can only be carried out in countries very far 
advanced in civilization, where men have considerable confidence 
in one another, and entire faith in the stability of Government ; 
while, in a country's infancy, on the other hand, where no such 
feeling is at all universal, it is very essential that the circulating 
medium should itself possess a certain intrinsic value, and for con- 
venience and utility's sake be divisible, durable and of uniform 
texture — whence it comes that value has been always estimated by 
weight and not by tale, and gold and silver have been the favorite 
metals. 
In so vast an agricultural country as India, where from time out 
of mind, the people have been caste ridden, where labor has been 
abundant and wages wretchedly low under governments despotic 
and changeable, and where there has been considerable internal 
trade, and where if we make exception in the matter of dyes, 
precious stones, and gold dust, which the ancients tell us came 
from countries near the source of the Indus, there was anciently 
no foreign commerce of importance the great majority of payments 
must always have been made in small coin, and though gold may 
at the same time have been abundant, for one instance of a tender 
of a gold piece, innumerable calls must have existed in such a 
country for a ^mall silver or copper currency. 
