July 1, 1898.] 
THE TROPICAL 
AGRICULTURIST. 
55 
Btand, egree closely witli the Index numbers, issued 
here by Ifr. Saueibeek. Let us assume, however, that 
" a wrong ia being done to " tho coolies, a wrong " of 
which they are not aware," who is it that ia profiting 
by the wrong? Who is the receiver of these stolen 
goods ? Certainly not the tea grower, for he has to 
sell more tea to get his hard earned rupee. No ! 
the real criminal is the tea drinker with a fixed gold 
salary or pension, the Britifh working man with his 
living wage fixed in gold, these are the people v,'ho 
have gone off with the spoil in the form of that 
cheap and »ood beyc nd experience. I can only hardly 
believe that they are as thankless for benefits received 
as " East India Merchant's " would make ont. 
And this brings me to the economic adjustment, 
the fall in the cost of labour, to which Mr. Harcourt 
Skrine looks forward under a gold standard. How 
does recent experience bear on this '? The rupee, as 
we have seen has for years been an absolutely stable 
measure of the value of Eastern labour, up to 1893 
it Had been a fairly stable measure of value of all 
the chief commodities, yet we have had the daily 
pay of the English working man rising steadily 
from about R2 to nearly R4. This gold pay has, if 
anything, increased. This change (for it is a change) 
has been going on for a qnarter of a century, and 
we still wait for any symptom of the economic 
adjustment. 
I come now to Lord Farrer's latest question. To 
those who have read my last letter with any care, it 
can hardly present any diiiiiulty. It is within my own 
personal experience that the rupee has been as high as 
2s 2d at the time of the cotton famine, and as low 
almost as Is some three years b&^'k. The coolie's daily 
wage has been at its highest nearly 9d, at its lowest a 
little above 4d. This is all matter of history ; but in 
what sense it is to be considered, as Lord Farrer states 
the " necessary consequence " of " the action of the 
Indian Government " in forcibly driving the rupee to 
Is 4d, I can hardly say. The position thus taken up 
by his Lordship seems to bear a strong family re- 
semblance to that other position to v/hich, he assures 
me, he holds that big crops from land planted 
before the closing of the Indian mints are good 
evidence as to the effects on the trade of the 
la 4d rupee established in January last. 
If Lord Farrer means seriously to argue that the 
effects on the trade of a change in the gold value of 
the rupee by reason of a foic_ed contraction of the 
currency will be similar in all respects to the effects 
of a change due solely to the fall in the gold value 
of the silver in the coin, I can only say that I 
differ from him, and that the argument seems so 
superficial as to be hardly worthy of so high an 
authority. 
I have done with my merchant's " nonsense." The 
impression left on my mind by this correspondence 
ia this : From those who approach these currency 
questions, attributing to either one standard or 
the other a special fi.xity, who cannot think of 
values indiffeieatly and with eqnal ease in silver or 
in gold, it is hopeless to look for a right judgment. 
Aa well might one have sought from Galileo's In- 
quisitors, with their firm faith in tbe fixity of the 
earth, a right solution of the motions of the heavenly 
bodies. — Yours faithfully, 
\VM. MARTIN LEAKE, Secretary. 
Csylon Association in London, 
61 and 62, Gracechutch street. May 18th, 1898. 
EXCHANGE AND CURRENCY. 
We fee! it an honour that Lord Farrer should 
send diiet'b to the C'ei/lon Observer, Ids views in refer- 
ence to tiie elfecc on the ryots and coolie* of what he 
calls "a depiecialed currency." His lords'.. i|j's letter 
in .another column will read with interest and 
attention. We may clear the ground in the first 
place, wo think, by pointing out that, however we 
m.ay diller about the etlect of a silver currency, 
Lord Fairer is, like ourselves, a stauncii luonome- 
tallist. From all his past wiitings, we infer tliat 
lie could have aotliing to do with putting; ariy bi- 
luelailic theory into practice. We are, thei eioie, 
shut lip to the belief that failing- an honest 
and reliable "gold standanl," Loid Farrer would 
vote for silver — in other words, an "lionest" 
rupee — currency for India and <^ eylon. Of course 
Lord Farrer may differ from Sir RoVjert Giifen 
(who lias sent anotiier able exfJanatory letter to 
the London Times which we reproduce elsewhere) 
as to the feasibleness of introducinr; a gold stand- 
ard at this lime into India. His lordship, for 
auolit we know, may favour the '-Lindsay' or 
some other scheme for supplying a gold currency 
witiiout incurring (he full responsibility usually 
attached to the substitution of'a gold for a silver 
standard. Rut we cannot suppose tha' Lord 
Farrer favours the practice ot the Indian author- 
ities in establishing an "artitioial" rupee and 
do|)leting tlie country of its currency to an e.v- 
tent (hat has seriously Iianipered trade and pre- 
judiced not only the producers but all classes 
of the community? For the present we take it 
that Lord Faner favours "gold" instead of 
"silver"; but that failing gold — as impracticable 
which, following Sir Eobert GifTen, we believe it 
to be, —he would not oppose the re-establislunent 
of the old silver currency to which India has been 
so long accustomed, rather than any bimetallic 
or paper compromise ? 
Having thus indicated, as we trust correctly, how 
far we see, eye to eye, we now proceed to deal 
with Lord Farrer's objections to a "depreciated," 
or as we prefer to call it, an "honest" silver 
currency in India and Ceylon. In the first place 
we think Lord Farrer would alter his view if 
he paid a visit himself to Indi.i and Ceylon and 
studied the subject in one or two of tiie great 
native, or planting, producing centres The 
millions of Indian ryots know and care no- 
thing about "exchange" or the complications 
of the British Government in reference to 
its sterling leans and remittances. But they 
do prize their "rupee" currency and self-contained 
as their districts so largely are, we feel sure 
that no one could ever make them believe 
otherwise than that the more rupees they 
got for their marketable produce, the better 
off they were in every material respect. As a 
matter of fact, it is generally acknowledgeil 
that never were the Indian ryots so i>rosperou3 
as previous to the closing of the mints in 1S93. 
The same thing applies to our Indian coolies 
in Ceylon. Ignorant as these Tamils are, they 
are wonderfully shrewd wherever their own or 
their employers' monetary interests are concerned. 
During the latter half of the fifty years' reign 
of "coffee" in Ceylon, it was quite interesting 
to learn how the coolies on the plantations 
talked among themselves of the prospect of a 
good ciop, and spread the news to their iiomes 
in Southern India, to encourage fiiends and re- 
latives to come over to share in thr- bencdits to 
them of the rich harvest of work which a full 
crop meant. Now the same thing is true iu the 
"tea" era as regards the piosperity of the em- 
ployer and the cooly being largely identical — the 
more rupees the former gets for the tea leaf crop, 
the more he can alFurd to spend through Raina- 
samy, on better cultivation, on extra work, on 
plucking a full re', urn of crop that is in profit- 
able demiuid, and the more liberal be can ali'ord 
to be in res|)ect of the issue of rice v>-liieb is 
often .su|i[)lied at a rate below cost jirice. But 
when rupees are scarce, and the planters' prolit 
