What Sir Edward Law did was to carry that recommendation into effect when the occasion arrived. In view of this it is useless to belabour the Government of India if the ideal of a gold standard with a gold currency was defeated by the coinage of rupees. But, even though the Government has in ignorance taken the blame on itself, it cannot be rightly thrown at its door. If the project has been defeated by the coinage of rupees, the question must be referred to the Fowler Committee. Why did the Committee permit the coinage of rupees? There is no direct answer, but it may be guessed. It seems the Committee first decided that there should be a gold standard and a gold currency as desired by the Government of India. But then they seemed to have been worried by the question whether in the ideal they had sketched they had made enough provision for the maintenance of the gold value of the rupee. [pg 285] In the view of the opponents of the Government of India the rupee ought to have been made either convertible as a bank note or a limited legal tender as a shilling. The Committee rejected both these demands as being unnecessary. Stating their ground for refusing to reduce the rupee to the status of a shilling, the Committee argued⁴³⁰:— “It is true that in the United Kingdom the silver currency has a fixed limit of 40s., beyond which it cannot be used to pay a debt. … While it cannot be denied that 40s. limitation tends to emphasize and maintain the subsidiary character of our silver coinage, yet the essential factor in maintaining those tokens at their representative nominal value is not the statutory limit on the amount for which they are a legal tender in any one payment, but the limitation of their total issue. Provided the latter restriction is adequate, there is no essential reason why there need be any limit on the amount for which tokens are a tender by law.” ⁴³⁰ Report, par. 56. Regarding the necessity for convertibility the Committee observed⁴³¹:—