of promoting the ideal of the Fowler Committee it is difficult to imagine; but the following extracts from the evidence of a witness (Mr. Webb), than whom there was no greater advocate of an open gold Mint before the Chamberlain Commission, help to indicate just what is expected from a gold Mint. ⁴⁰⁹ _See_ Commons Paper 495, of 1913, p. 57. ⁴¹⁰ _Ibid._, p. 64. ⁴¹¹ Report, secs. 69–71. ⁴¹² The Commission recommended that if a gold Mint was not established in India Government should renew the notification withdrawn in 1906 to receive refined gold on suitable terms.—Report, sec. 72. ⁴¹³ Report, par. 67. “The principal advantage which you would expect to derive from a gold Mint is that you would increase the amount of gold coin in circulation?—That would be one of the tendencies. “Is there any other advantage?—The advantage is that the country would be fitted with what I regard as an essential part of its monetary mechanism. I regard it as an essential part of its currency mechanism that it should have a Mint at which money could be coined at the requisition of the public. “I want to get exactly at your reason why that is essential. Am I right in thinking that you consider it essential to a proper currency system that there should be a gold currency?—Yes. “And essential to a gold currency that there should be a gold Mint?—Yes, on the spot in India itself. … It would do away, in a measure, with the management by the Secretary of State of the Foreign Exchanges, in that there would be always the Mint at which the public could convert their gold into legal-tender coins in the event of the Secretary of State taking any action of which the public did not approve. It is a safeguard, so to speak, an additional safeguard, that the people of India can on the spot obtain their own money on presentation of the metal.”