“proved a failure, owing, firstly, to the condition that they would not be received in payment of revenue for twelve months; secondly, they would be paid off or received only where issued, so that as the issues were confined to Calcutta, Madras and Bombay, their use and employment for purposes of circulation were limited to those cities … and lastly, because their amounts were too large and their period of running at interest too short.”⁷² [pg 36] ⁷² _How to Meet the Financial Difficulties of India_, by A. C. B., London, 1859, p. 13. This is in many ways a most remarkable pamphlet which suggested many of the later reforms in Indian currency and banking. Nor was banking so widely developed as to satisfy the currency needs of commerce. The chief hindrance to its growth was the attitude of the Court. Being itself a commercial body largely dealing in exchange, the Court was averse to the development of banking institutions lest they should prove rivals. As this traditional policy of hostility continued even after the Court had ceased to be a body of merchant princes, banks did not grow with the growth of trade. Indeed, as late as 1856 banks in India numbered few and their issues were small, as shown in the table on opposite page. The insufficiency of silver and the want of credit currency caused such an embarrassment to trade that there grew up a change in the attitude towards the Currency Act of 1835, and people, for once, began to ask whether, although it was well to have changed from bimetallism to monometallism, it would not have been better to have preferred gold monometallism to silver monometallism. As more and more of gold was imported and coined the stronger grew the demand for giving it a legal status in the existing system of Indian currency.⁷³ All were agreed on the principle of a gold currency: whatever difference there was, was confined to the method of its adoption. The introduction of gold on a bimetallic basis was out of the question, for the Government refused to make what it deemed to be the “hopeless attempt” to fix the value of gold and silver and compel their acceptance at that value.⁷⁴ The projects which the Government was willing to consider⁷⁵ were: (1) to introduce the “sovereign” or some other gold coin and to let it circulate at its market price from day to day as measured in silver; (2) to issue a new gold coin, bearing the exact value of a given number of [pg 37] ⁷³ The matter was first broached by the native shroffs and merchants of Calcutta in April, 1859, in a letter to the President of the Bengal Chamber of Commerce. Both agreed to urge upon the Government the necessity of a gold currency in India. Cf. _Papers relating to the Introduction of a Gold Currency in India_, Calcutta, 1866, pp. 1–3. ⁷⁴ _Ibid._, p. 6. ⁷⁵ Cf. Minute by the Rt. Hon. James Wilson, dated December 25, 1859, _ibid._, p. 23.