The council bill has a history which goes back to the days of the East India Company.⁴⁰³ The peculiar position [pg 264] of the Government of India, arising from the fact that it receives its revenues in India and is obliged to make payments in England, imposes upon it the necessity of making remittances from India to England. Ever since the days of the East India Company the policy has been to arrange for the remittance in such a way as to avoid the transmission of bullion. Three modes of making the remittance were open to the Directors of the East India Company: (1) Sending bullion from India to England; (2) receiving money in England in return for bills on the Government of India; and (3) making advances to merchants in India for the purchase of goods consigned to the United Kingdom and repayable in England to the Court of Directors of the Company to whom the goods were hypothecated. Out of these it was on the last two that greater reliance was placed by them. In time the mode of remittance through hypothecation of goods was dropped “as introducing a vicious system of credit, and interfering with the ordinary course of trade.” The selling of bills on India survived as the fittest of all the three alternatives,⁴⁰⁴ and was continued by the Secretary of State in Council—hence the name, council bill—when the Government of India was taken over by the Crown from the Company. In the hands of the Secretary of State the council bill has undergone some modifications. The sales as now effected are weekly sales,⁴⁰⁵ and are managed through the Bank of England, which issues an advertisement on every Wednesday on behalf of the Secretary of State for India, inviting tenders to be submitted on the following Wednesday for bills payable on [pg 265] demand by the Government of India either at Bombay, Madras, or Calcutta. The minimum fraction of a penny in the price at which tenders of bills are received has now⁴⁰⁶ been fixed at \frac{1}{32}nd of a penny. The council bill is no longer of one species as it used to be. On the other hand there are four classes of bills: (1) Ordinary bills of exchange, sold every Wednesday, known as “_Councils_”; (2) telegraphic transfers, sold on Wednesdays, called shortly “_Transfers_”;⁴⁰⁷ (3) ordinary bills of exchange, sold on any day in the week excepting Wednesday, called “Intermediates”; and (4) telegraphic transfers, sold on any day excepting Wednesday, named “_Specials_.” Now, in what way does the Secretary of State use his machinery of council bills to prevent gold from going to India? It is said that the price and the magnitude of the sale are so arranged that gold does not go to India. Before we examine to what extent this has defeated the policy of the Fowler Committee, the following figures (Tables LI and LII, pp. 266–7) are presented for purposes of elucidation.