8. Let us sum up the argument so far, and enforce at the same time the contention, brought up at the end of Chapter I., that the volume of currency circulating in India does not depend, as some critics have maintained, on the caprice of the India Office in the amount of Council Bills that it offers for sale. So far as Council Bills are sold for the ordinary purposes of remittance of Government funds from India to London, they are cashed in India out of the general balances of Government. But when they are sold in larger quantities, to obviate the necessity of sovereigns being sent, sufficient rupees are not forthcoming from this source. One expedient is to pay out some of the rupees in the Paper Currency Reserve or in the silver branch of the Gold Standard Reserve, and to pay an equivalent sum into the branches of these reserves which are held in London, “earmarked” at the Bank of England,[53] or in other sterling forms. If, on the other hand, the India Council had refused to sell bills freely, gold would have been exported to India, taken to the Paper Currency Department, and exchanged for rupees in notes or silver. In either case there is a similar increase in the volume of currency in India not held by the Government. The volume of currency which finds its way into circulation in India is, therefore, quite independent of the Secretary of State’s action. Exceptional amounts of Council Bills are only sold when exchange has reached a point at which it is nearly as profitable to remit gold; and if Council Bills were not sold sovereigns would go instead (the expense of sending them being lost), for which the Government of India would have to give rupees in exchange. This point is important, for it is often assumed in controversy regarding the currency and its relation to prices that the issue of rupees into circulation depends in some way upon the amount of Council Bills sold by the Government, and can, therefore, be expanded or contracted by them at will, according to the policy of the moment. Broadly speaking, this is false. Even if the Government were to hasten the flow of rupees into circulation by selling an exceptional quantity of bills at a relatively low rate (which would be equivalent to lowering by a fraction of a penny the normal value of the rupee as measured in sterling), and were to pursue this policy over a long period, the permanent effect could be no more than in proportion to the amount by which they had thus lowered the par value of the rupee in terms of sterling. This is the amount of their conceivable executive power, if the Government were to exercise it. In fact, it has not been exercised.