It is said that if the council bills were sold in amounts required strictly for the purposes of the Home Treasury, and sold at a price not below gold-import point, gold would tend to be imported into India and would thus become part of the Indian currency media. As it is, the combined effect of the operations of the Secretary of State is said to be to [pg 269] lock up Indian gold in London. With the use or misuse of the Indian gold in London we are not here concerned. But those who are inclined to justify the India Office scandals in the management of Indian funds in London, and have offered their services to place them on a scientific footing, may be reminded that a practice on one side of Downing Street which Bagehot said could not be carried on on the other side of it without raising a storm of criticism, would require more ingenuity than has been displayed in their briefs. This much seems to have been admitted on both sides, that the operations of the Secretary of State do prevent the importation of gold into India, not altogether, but to the extent covered by their magnitude. Now, those who have held that the ideal of the Fowler Committee has been defeated are no doubt right in their view that the narrowing of the Secretary of State’s operation would lead to the importation of gold into India. But what justification is there for assuming that the imported gold would become a part of the currency of India? The assumption that the abolition of the Secretary of State’s financial dealings would automatically make gold the currency of India is simply a gratuitous assumption. Whether the imported gold would become current depends on quite a different circumstance.