Similarly, it cannot be granted without reserve that the new currency system must be good because it has obviated the burden of the gold payments and given relief to the Indian taxpayer. Such a view involves a misconception of the precise source of the burden of India’s gold payments during the period of falling exchange. It has been widely held that the burden of gold payments was caused by the fall in the gold value of silver, a view which carried with it the necessary implication that if India had been a gold-standard country she would have escaped that heavy burden. That it is an erroneous view hardly needs demonstration.³⁰⁴ It is not to be denied that India bore an extra burden arising from the increased value of the gold payments. But what is not sufficiently realized is that it was a burden which weighed on all gold debtors irrespective of the question whether their standard was gold or silver. In this respect the position of a gold-standard country like Australia was not different from a silver-standard country like India. In so far as they were gold debtors they suffered each in the same way from the same cause, namely the appreciation of the standard in which their debts were measured. The fact that one discharged her debts in gold and the other in silver made no difference in their condition, except that the use of silver by India to discharge her debts served as a refractory medium through which it was possible to see the magnitude of the burden she bore. The fall of silver measured and not caused the burden of India’s gold payments. The arrest in the fall of the rupee cannot be accepted as a _prima facie_ [pg 187] proof of a relief to the taxpayer and therefore an evidence of the soundness of the currency system. It is possible that the benefit may have been too dearly paid for. ³⁰⁴ Cf. evidence of Prof. Marshall before the Gold and Silver Commission, 1886. Q. 10,140–50. Although favourably impressed by the increase of trade and the buoyancy of Government finances under the exchange standard, the Chamberlain Commission did not care to found its case for it on the basis of such arguments. The chief ground on which it rested was that the currency system was capable of maintaining the exchange value of the rupee at a fixed par with gold.³⁰⁵ We must therefore proceed to examine this claim made by the Commission on behalf of the exchange standard. The table on p. 188 presents the requisite data for an elucidation of the question. ³⁰⁵ Report, pp. 18 and 20. Assuming, for the moment, the criterion laid down by the Commission to be correct, can it be said from the data given above that the rupee has maintained its gold value? It would be over-confident if not rash to say that the system, even from the narrow point of view of the Commission, has been an unquestioned success.