The part which India has played in the currency history of the world has been characteristic and uniform from the first. India is, and has been, from the birth of international commerce, the receptacle or sink for the precious metals of the civilised Western world. The fact that in so being she has constituted herself the safety-valve of the world's currencies is not confined to the present day merely. It is peculiarly applicable to the present day, with our organisation of banking and credit, which has concentrated the metallic reserves in certain burning central spots, and built thereon a superstructure of credit transactions so vast and in so delicately poised a manner that any undue addition to the metallic reserve sends a shudder of excitement and speculation through the whole, inducing over-trading and over-funding, and in the end a crisis. Such is the structure of the world's commerce that India provides an outlet or drain for any sudden crisis-bringing inflow of precious metal, and preserves the equilibrium of our system. The fact is patent to-day, because the nature of our credit and banking system is understood. But in reality this function India has performed through ages. The influence she now exerts through impact with a highly delicate credit system, she formerly exerted on a less uniform and delicate system by the rougher influence of prices generally. The gain attending the Eastern trade in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries was not measured by modern conceptions of dividends or trading margins. To the European trader the intercourse was attended with a double gain, commercial and financial--the latter really bimetallic in nature from the higher ratio then prevailing between silver and gold in India. To India it meant a perpetual balance of trade in her favour, if such a phrase can be used of such a situation,--a continual inflow of precious metal. Her capacity of absorption of metal seems as large and unsatisfied as ever, and, on the assumption of an unaltered situation in Europe and America, her function in the world's currency system still remains--feasible and beneficent. It is the most difficult question attending the modern currency crisis, whether such assumption of an unaltered situation is permissible.