The other explanation offered to explain the failure of the ideal of the Fowler Committee is the want of a Mint in India open to the free coinage of gold. The opening of the Mints to the free coinage of gold has been regarded as the most vital recommendation of the Fowler Committee; indeed, so much so that the frustration of its ideal has been attributed to the omission by the Government to carry it out. The consent given by the Government in 1900 to drop the proposal under the rather truculent attitude of the Treasury has ever since been resented by the advocates of a gold currency. A resolution was moved in 1911 by Sir V. Thackersay, in the Supreme Legislative Council, urging upon the Government the desirability of opening a gold Mint for the coinage of the sovereign if the Treasury consented, and if not for the coinage of some other gold coin. In deference to the united voice of the Council, the Government [pg 270] of India again asked the Secretary of State to approach the Treasury for its sanction.⁴⁰⁹ The Treasury on this occasion presented the Secretary of State⁴¹⁰ with two alternatives: (1) That a branch of the Royal Mint be established at Bombay solely for the purpose of coining gold into sovereigns, and exclusively under its control; or (2) that the control of the Mint at Bombay should be entirely transferred to it. Neither of the two alternatives was acceptable to the Government of India; and the Secretary of State, as a concession to Indian sentiment, sanctioned the issue of a ten-rupee gold coin from the Indian Mint. The Government of India preferred this solution to that suggested by the Treasury, but desired that the matter be dealt with afresh by the Chamberlain Commission then sitting. That Commission did not recommend a gold Mint,⁴¹¹ but saw no objection to its establishment provided the coin issued was a sovereign, and if the coinage of it was desired by Indian sentiment and if the Government did not mind the expense of coinage.⁴¹² This view of the Commission carried the proposition no further than where it was in 1900, until the war compelled the Government to open the Bombay Mint for the coinage of gold as a branch of the Royal Mint. But it was again closed in 1919. Its reopening was recommended by the Currency Committee of 1919,⁴¹³ and so enthusiastically was the project received that an Honourable Member of the Supreme Council took the unique step of tempting the Government into adopting that recommendation by an offer to increase the Budget Estimates under “Mint” to enable the Government to bear the cost of it. The Government, however, declined the offer with thanks. So we have in India the singular spectacle of a country in which there was a gold Mint even when gold was not legal [pg 271] tender, as was the case between 1835–93, while there is no gold Mint, when gold is legal tender, as has been the case since 1893. Just what an open Mint can do in the matter