In outlining this Minute, which with modifications in the maximum gold to be held in the currency reserve, remains the foundation of the currency system in India, the author of it never seems to have asked for one moment what was to happen to the ideal of a gold standard and a gold currency? Was he assisting the consummation of the gold standard or was he projecting the abandonment of the gold standard in thus putting a limit on the holding of gold? Before the policy of this Minute was put into execution the Indian currency system was approximating to that of the Bank Charter Act of 1844, in which the issue of rupees was limited and that of gold unlimited. This Minute proposed that the issue of gold should be limited and that of rupees unlimited—an exact reversal to the system of the Bank Suspension period. In this lies the great significance of the Minute, which deliberately outlined a policy of substituting rupees for gold in Indian currency and thereby defeating the ideal held out since 1893 and well-nigh accomplished in 1900. If Sir Edward Law had realized that this meant an abandonment of the gold standard, perhaps he would not have recorded the Minute. But what were the considerations alluded to in the Minute which led him thus to subvert the policy of a gold standard and a gold currency and put a limit on the gold part of the currency rather than on the rupee part of the currency? They are to be found in a despatch, No. 302, dated September 6, 1900, from the Government of India, which says:— “2. … the receipts of gold continued and increased after December last. For more than eight months the gold in the currency reserve has exceeded, and the silver has been less, than the limits suggested in the despatch of June 18. By the middle of January the stock of gold in the currency reserve in India reached £5,000,000. The proposal [pg 280] made in that despatch was at once brought into operation; later on we sent supplies of sovereigns to the larger District Treasuries, with instructions that they should be issued to anyone who desired to receive them in payments due or in exchange for rupees; and in March we directed the Post Office to make in sovereigns all payments of money orders in the Presidency towns and Rangoon, and we requested the Presidency Banks to make in the Presidency towns and Rangoon payments on Government account as far as possible in sovereigns. These measures were taken, not so much in the expectation that they would in the early future relieve us of any large part of our surplus gold, but in the hope that they would accustom the people to gold, would hasten the time when it will pass into general circulation in considerable quantities, and by so doing would mitigate in future years the difficulties that we were experiencing from the magnitude of our stock of gold and the depletion of our stock of rupees.