This goal, if it was their goal, the Government of India have never attained. The rupee is still the principal medium of exchange and is of unlimited legal tender. There is no legal enactment compelling any authority to redeem rupees with gold. The fact that since 1899 the gold value of the rupee has only fluctuated within narrow limits is solely due to administrative measures which the Government are under no compulsion to undertake. What, then, is the present position of the rupee? 6. The main features of the Indian system as now established are as follows:— (1) The rupee is unlimited legal tender and, so far as the law provides, inconvertible. (2) The sovereign is unlimited legal tender at £1 to 15 rupees, and is convertible at this rate, so long as a Notification issued in 1893 is not withdrawn, _i.e._, the Government can be required to give 15 rupees in exchange for £1. (3) As a matter of administrative practice, the Government is, as a rule, willing to give sovereigns for rupees at this rate; but the practice is sometimes suspended and large quantities of gold cannot always be obtained in India by tendering rupees. (4) As a matter of administrative practice, the Government will sell in Calcutta, in return for rupees tendered there, bills payable in London in sterling at a rate not more unfavourable than 1s. 3–29/32d. per rupee. The fourth of these provisions is the vital one for supporting the sterling value of the rupee; and, although the Government have given no binding undertaking to maintain it, a failure to do so might fairly be held to involve an utter breakdown of their system. Thus the second provision prevents the sterling value of the rupee from rising above 1s. 4d. by more than the cost of remitting sovereigns to India, and the fourth provision prevents it from falling below 1s. 3–29/32d. This means in practice that the extreme limits of variation of the sterling value of the rupee are 1s. 4⅛d. and 1s. 3–29/32d. 7. The important characteristics of the Indian system are so much a matter of notification and administrative practice that it is impossible to point to single Acts which have made the system what it is. But the following list of dates may be useful for purposes of reference:— 1892. Herschell Committee on Indian Currency. 1893. Act closing the Indian mints to the coinage of silver on private account. Notifications by Government fixing the rate, at which rupees or notes would be supplied in exchange for the tender of gold, at the equivalent of 1s. 4d. the rupee. 1898. Fowler Committee on Indian Currency. Exchange value of rupee touched 1s. 4d. 1899. Act declaring the British sovereign legal tender at 1s. 4d. to the rupee. 1899–1903. Negotiations for coinage of sovereigns in India (dropt indefinitely Feb. 6, 1903). 1900. Gold Standard Reserve instituted out of profits of coinage.