“24. To obtain fixity of exchange by the adoption of a gold standard, and the substitution of a gold for a silver currency through the direct action of the Government, has, we think, been conclusively shown to be impracticable by the despatch of the Government of India of October last, and this plan therefore calls for no further notice. The increase in the weight of the rupee, also noticed in that despatch, is equally undeserving of attention, as, in fact, it would give no security for the future, and would entail a heavy charge without accomplishing the essential point to be aimed at. There remains the simpler, and first proposed suggestion, the limitation of the coinage of silver, which, though rejected in 1876 by the Government of India … appears to us to call now for a closer examination. [pg 127] “25. This suggestion in its main features is, that the Coinage Act shall be so far modified as to withdraw the free right of the public to take silver bullion to the Mint for coinage, and either to suspend it entirely in future, or limit it for a time. “26. It is obviously an essential part of any such scheme, if it is to have the effect of fixing the exchange value of the rupee, that the power of obtaining that coin in future shall be regulated in some manner by a gold payment, and that the relation between sterling and rupee currency shall thus be fixed irrespective of the fluctuations in the relative value of the metals of which the coins are formed. “27. It is not, on the other hand, an essential part of such a plan that any particular relation of value should be thus fixed at two shillings … or at any smaller or larger proportion. All that is necessary is that the rate, being once fixed, shall remain for the future unchanged. … “33. Probably the most important question is … whether or not it is practicable to maintain a silver coinage as the principal element in our currency, with a very limited gold coinage, or without a legal-tender gold coinage at all. The Government of India, in its despatch of 1876, expressed an opinion adverse to the possibility of maintaining such a system. … On a full reconsideration of this point, we are led to take the opposite view, and to think that such a system would be perfectly practicable and would lead to no material difficulty. It is true that there is no country in which such a condition of things actually exists. But those countries, and there are many of them, in which an inconvertible paper currency exists or has existed, give proof that the far greater anomaly of a currency devoid of any intrinsic value whatever is capable of performing the work of a metallic currency satisfactorily, and of maintaining its local exchange value, so long as an excessive issue is only guarded against.