undersell
India in tea and rice; the Bombay manufacturers would receive fewer rupees
for their wares, and, as in the case of opium, the advantage would go to
the Chinese and Japanese; the railways would have little to carry from the
interior if the rupee prices went down. Finally, I may observe that the
gold industry of India would be largely injured, and that, especially,
mines struggling towards a successful issue would be seriously hampered if
the gold value of the rupee were forced up.

Brief though my survey of this great subject may be, I trust I have said
enough to expose the harmonious rottenness of the monetary policy of the
Government, and by this I mean a rottenness so complete that it is
impossible to find a single redeeming feature in the measure that has been
adopted. It is rotten economically, it is rotten financially, and it is,
if possible, still more rotten from a political point of view. Those who
have knowledge enough to understand the bearing and ultimate evil effects
of the measure are angrily arrayed against the Government now, and when
the ryots and labouring classes of all kinds experience the fall in prices
and dearth of employment that will assuredly follow if the Government
should be able to force up the gold value of the rupee, and are able to
trace this to the action of their rulers, widespread and serious will be
the abiding discontent which will take possession of the people.

I cannot conclude this short notice of a great subject without commenting
on what, at first sight, seems the remarkable fact, that the Government in
India, as represented by the Viceroy, and those merchants who are
represented by Mr. Mackay, President of the Currency Association, have
admitted that a low exchange has been a stimulus to the progress of India,
and that producers have gained by it. It is true that the Viceroy declared
in his speech in Council of June 26th, 1893, that "to leave matters as
they were meant for the country as a whole a fatal and stunting
arrestation [_sic_, probably a misprint for arrestment] of its
development."[69] But the cat escapes later on in the speech when a hope
is expressed that one of the effects of the measure will be "that capital
will flow more freely into the country without the adventitious stimulus
which we have hitherto been unable to refuse." The Viceroy thus admits,
what everyone knows, that a low exchange has acted as a stimulus to the
progress of India, and in doing