exchange is stable it is not because there is a peg, but because the price-levels in the two countries have reached a new equilibrium. Essentially the exchange is stable because it is an artificial purchasing-power parity. Whether it will continue to be so depends upon the movements in the home prices. If the home prices rise more than the rise brought about by the peg in the foreign prices the mechanism must break. It is from this point of view that the condition laid down by the Irish Committee on exchange regarding the limitation on issue must be held as one of vital character. In omitting to advert to that condition the Indian currency contradicts what is best in that Report of the Irish Committee. ³⁶² In 1876, when Mr. Lindsay first set out his scheme in the pages of his _Calcutta Review_, he mentions no parallel at all. In 1892, in his _Ricardo’s Exchange Remedy_, he uttered the name of Ricardo as an authority for his plan, but in 1898 he shifted his ground, so much so that he blamed (_Economic Journal_, _supra_) Probyn for taking Ricardo’s gold-bar plan as a basis. The reason why he disavowed Ricardo as his authority most probably lies in the fact that Ricardo’s general views of currency were rather damaging to his position. In view of the fact that there are so many people who assert, no doubt, from the title of his _Proposals for an Economical and Secure Currency_, that Ricardo wrote against a metallic standard, it is worth while recording the following passage from his _Proposals_, in which he says: “During the late discussion on the bullion questions, it was almost justly contended that a currency, to be perfect, should be absolutely invariable in value. But it was said, too, that ours had become such a currency, by the Bank Restriction Bill; for by that bill we had wisely discarded gold and silver as the standard of our money … Those who supported this opinion did not see that such a currency, instead of being variable, was subject to the greatest variations—that the only use of a standard is to regulate the quantity, and by the quantity the value of the currency—and that without a standard it would be exposed to all the fluctuations to which the ignorance or the interests of the issuers might subject it.” ³⁶³ The Report, which is a masterly document, was eclipsed by the Bullion Report, though both contain the same doctrine, by reason of its not being printed till 1826. _See_ Lords Paper 48 of 1826. ³⁶⁴ Report, p. 16. Italics not in the original. ³⁶⁵ See _Hansard Parliamentary Debates_, Vol. XIV, pp. 75–91. ³⁶⁶ Cf. the succinct statement by T. E. Gregory, _Foreign Exchanges_, p. 86.