“Outside the United Kingdom there are two principal instances of countries with a gold standard and currency, which admit silver coins to unlimited tender. These countries are France and the United States of America. In France the five-franc piece is an unlimited tender and for all internal purposes is equivalent to gold. The same remark applies in the United States to the silver dollar. … Both in France and the United States the Mints are now closed to the coinage of silver coins of unlimited tender. In neither country are such coins convertible by law into gold; in both countries alike they are equivalent to gold for all internal purposes. For international payments, so far as specie is concerned, France and the United States depend ultimately on the international medium of exchange, which is gold. In the last resort, it is their gold which, acting through the foreign exchanges, maintains the whole mass of their currency at its nominal value for internal purposes. ⁴³¹ Report, pars. 57–60. “The position of the currency question in India being [pg 286] such as we have explained in the preceding paragraph, we do not consider it necessary to recommend a different policy in the case of that country from that which is found sufficient in France and the United States, by imposing a legal obligation on the Government of India to give gold for rupees, or, in other words, to substitute the former for the latter on the demand of the holders. This obligation would impose on the Government of India a liability to find gold at a moment’s notice to an amount which cannot be defined beforehand, and the liability is one which, in our opinion, ought not to be accepted.” Although confident of its opinions, the Committee was considerably impressed by those who, owing to the large quantity of rupees in circulation, entertained doubts “whether the mere closing of the Indian Mints to silver would in practice be attended with such a restriction of the rupee currency as would make the rupee permanently exchangeable for gold at a fixed rate.” So much was the Committee shaken by these doubts that it admitted that⁴³² “the forces which affect the gold value of the rupee are complicated and obscure in their mode of operation, and we are unable, therefore, to say positively that the mere closing of the Mints to silver will, in practice, lead to such a limitation of the rupee currency, relatively to the demands for it, as will make the rupee permanently exchangeable for gold at a fixed rate.” ⁴³² Report, par. 58.