As a remedy against such a contingency the Committee thought that the Government of India should accept the obligation of convertibility of the rupee into gold for foreign remittances whenever the rupee fell below specie point. Having hit upon such a simple solution the next question was how was the Government to get its gold reserve? Borrowing for the purposes of such a gold reserve was one way of doing it. But that project was somehow unpalatable to the Committee. Perhaps because it had admonished the Government, in another part of its Report,⁴³³ to [pg 287] “husband the resources at their command, exercise a resolute economy, and restrict the growth of their gold obligations,” ⁴³³ Report, par. 70. or because it was a vicious principle to borrow “for the establishment or the maintenance of a gold standard,”⁴³⁴ the Committee was averse to the proposal for gold borrowing. But if a gold reserve was not to be built up by borrowing, how could it be built up otherwise? The Committee seems to have been considerably troubled over the problem of finding an alternative mode of raising a reserve until some member of it, probably at a moment when his intellect was rather weak, proposed ‘Well, why not allow the Government to coin rupees? If that were allowed it could easily build up a gold reserve without having to borrow, and can then discharge the obligation of convertibility for foreign remittances.’ So innocuous seemed the proposal that the Committee wholeheartedly adopted and incorporated it into its Report with a certain sigh of relief that is unmistakable from the firm language in which it was expressed. ⁴³⁴ _See_ the Reservations to the Report by Campbell Helland and Muir Report, p. 27. This may or may not be a correct interpretation of the reasoning employed by the Committee in permitting the Government to coin rupees. But the fact remains that the Committee did not realize what was involved in that recommendation. First of all, what was to happen to the gold standard and currency if the coinage of rupees was to go on? In this regard is it possible to have more respect for a Committee which lays down on the one hand the ideal of a gold standard and currency, and permits on the other hand the coinage of rupees, than Bagehot felt for the Directors of the Bank of England, who, on March 25, 1819, passed that notorious resolution:— “That the Court cannot refrain from adverting to an opinion, strongly insisted upon by some, that the Bank has only to reduce its issues to obtain a favourable turn in the Exchanges, and a consequent influx of the precious metals; [pg 288] the Court conceives it to be its duty to declare that it is unable to discover any solid foundation for such a sentiment”?