“From this rejection of the coin current in one district when tendered in payment in another, the merchants and traders, and the proprietors and cultivators of land in different parts of the country, are subjected in their commercial dealings with each other to the same losses by exchange, and all other inconveniences that would necessarily result were the several districts under separate and independent governments, each having a different coin.” ¹² It was this necessity for ascertaining the true bullion value of the debased coins which gave rise to that class of money-changers known as Shroffs, who specialised in the business of evaluating the coins at their proper discount from the standard purity by means of the dates and other characteristics engraved upon them. ¹³ It is stated that Dr. Roxburgh, who was an eye-witness, was so much impressed by the sufferings of the poor owing to the bad state of the currency that he urged upon A. Dalrymple in a letter dated June 30, 1791, to give prominence to the evils by inserting a paper in his _Oriental Repertory_ (2 vols., London, 1808), “on the current coin in circulation over the Company’s Territories which might be productive of the most solid and lasting advantage to the Governing and the Governed,” and added, “You may be able to correct the evil, by which you will certainly go to heaven, if the prayers of the poor avail, and I may get a step nearer paradise.” _Observations on the Copper Coinage wanted in the Circars_, by A. Dalrymple, London, 1794, p. 1.