²¹¹ It was composed of Louis Mallet, Edward Stanhope, T. L. Seccombe, R. E. Welby, T. H. Farrer, R. Giffen, and A. J. Balfour. ²¹² For Report of the Committee, _see_ Commons Paper C. 4868 of 1886, p. 26. ²¹³ Q. 10,025–50. ²¹⁴ So novel was the idea at the time that the United States Monetary Commission, 1876, was surprised when some of the witnesses expressed themselves in favour of regulating the principal metallic unit of account in the currency system of a country by Governmental agency. _See_ 44 Congress 2nd Session Senate Document, No. 703, pp. 47–48. ²¹⁵ Cf. his _Some Articles on the Depreciation of Silver, and on Topics connected with it_, London, 1877, pp. 10, 65, and 80; also his evidence before the _Select Committee on the Depreciation of Silver_, Lords Paper 178 of 1876, Q. 1,361–1,450. Whatever might be said with regard to the Committee’s preference of a natural to an artificial system of currency, there can be no doubt that in turning down the proposals of the Government, in the hope that silver would recover, it was grossly deceived. The basic assumptions on which the Committee was led to act failed to come true. To the surprise of everybody India refused to absorb this “white dirt.” Indeed, it was one of the puzzles of the time to know why, if silver had fallen so much in Europe, it did not go to India in larger quantities. Many blamed the Secretary of State for the sale of his Council Bills.²¹⁶ These bills, it was said, presented an alternative mode of remittance so much better as to prevent the sending of silver to India, and thereby caused a diminution in the demand for it. That this was not a correct view is obvious.²¹⁷ Silver could not have [pg 131] gone to India more than it did even if Council Bills had been abolished. Council Bills must be regarded as ordinary trade bills drawn against services and commodities, and could not be said to have competed with the transmission of bullion in any special manner different to that attributable to the trade bills. The only bearing the Council Bills may be said to have had upon the issue in question lies in the fact that to the extent they figured in the transactions they prevented India from buying other commodities. But there was nothing to prevent her residual buying power left over after paying for the Council Bills from being utilized in the purchase of silver in preference to other commodities. That this buying power would be used in purchasing silver because it was depreciated in Europe was theoretically an unsound assumption on the part of Mr. Bagehot. The deciding factor which could have caused such a diversion of this residual buying power to the purchase of silver was whether it was _appreciated in India_. Only on that condition could there have been a flow of it to India. But as matters then stood, it was the opinion of Prof.