Again, Sir V. Thackersay, in the course of his speech on March 22, 1912, moving a resolution in the Legislative Council, asking the Government to open the Mint for the coinage of gold in India, observed:— “Let me make myself clear on one point. _I do not suggest that Government should give up the right to coin rupees or refuse to give rupees when people demand the same_. I do not propose to touch the gold-standard reserve, which must remain as it is as the ultimate guarantee of our currency policy. My proposal does not interfere with the existing arrangements in any way, but is merely supplementary to them. … Let the Government of India accumulate gold to the maximum limit of its capacity, but let the surplus gold which it cannot absorb be coined and circulated if the public chooses to do so. With our expanding trade and the balance in our favour, gold will continue to be imported in ordinary time, and _if the facilities of minting are provided in India, it will go into circulation_.”⁴¹⁷ ⁴¹⁷ _S.L.C.P._, Vol. L, pp. 637–38. Italics not in the original. Those are surely not the ways of promoting a gold currency. Indeed, they run counter to it. So long as the coinage of rupees goes on gold will not enter into currency. Indeed, to cry out on the one hand against the huge drawings of the Secretary of State and the consequent transfer of Indian funds to London and their mismanagement by the Secretary of State, and on the other hand to permit him to manufacture additional token coinage of rupees, is to display not only a lamentable ignorance of a fundamental principle of currency, but also to show a complete failure to understand the precise source from which the whole trouble arises. It is true that the Government of India cannot bind the Secretary of State to any particular course of action,⁴¹⁸ [pg 274] and he often does override the provisions of the Annual Budget. But the question remains, How is it that he is able to draw so much more after 1893 than he ever did before? It must be remembered that whatever the Secretary of State does with the funds in London he must pay for his drawings in India. Before 1893 he drew less because his means of payment were less; after 1893 he drew more because his means of payment were greater. And why were his means of payment greater? Simply because he had been able to coin rupees. Indeed, the amount of drawings are limited by the demand for them and by his capacity to coin rupees. It is therefore foolish to blame the Secretary of State for betraying the interests of India and at the same time to permit him to coin rupees, the very means by which he is able to betray. If a gold currency is wanted, and it is wanted because the rupee is a bad standard of value, then what is necessary is not to put a limit on the drawings of the Secretary of State or the opening of a gold Mint, but a short enactment stopping the coinage of rupees.