a token coin, one means of making such a limit effective is to put a limit on its legal tender. With regard to its views on convertibility, its reasoning was equally confused. To say what was sufficient for France and America should be sufficient for India, was like the blind leading the blind. It was entirely erroneous to argue that it was not convertibility but their gold “which, acting through the foreign exchanges, maintains the whole mass of their currency at its nominal value for internal purposes.” [pg 291] Quite the contrary. France and America did not need convertibility to protect their currency because the silver franc and the silver dollar were absolutely limited in quantity. Indeed, far from being protected by the influx of gold, the limitation of issue not only maintained their value, but permitted the retention of whatever gold there was in those countries. Now, the Committee, instead of venturing into long-winded and pointless disquisitions, should have insisted that there was no necessity either to prescribe a limit of tender or convertibility with regard to the rupee, so long as there were other ways of restricting its over-issue. Limitation of legal tender or convertibility can be said to be essential only because they are the means of bringing about a limitation of issue, and if the requisite limitation of issue was provided for in other ways, the purpose for which convertibility or limitation of legal tender were asked for was accomplished. Now, was not the closing of the Mints a sufficient limitation on the volume of rupees? Indeed, if the closing of the Mints was not an effective limitation on the issue of rupees, what else could have been? Was not the closing of the Mints the same thing as regulating the currency on the principle of a fixed-issue system so well known in the matter of regulating paper currencies? That it was, could hardly be denied. That being so, the only question was whether the volume of rupees already in circulation was distinctly less than the minimum amount of legal-tender money ever necessary for the internal circulation of the country. The Government of India had foreseen the volume of rupees in circulation becoming in excess of such a minimum and had accordingly provided against it. In their despatch of March 3, 1898, outlining their plans, the Government observed:—