The only concession that the Secretary of State was willing to make was to permit “that gold coin should be received [pg 46] into public treasuries at a rate to be fixed by Government and publicly announced by Proclamation” without making it a general legal tender in India. It will be recalled that this was a revival of that foolish measure which was abandoned in 1852 for having embarrassed the Government. To offer to receive coin which you cannot pay back is to court trouble, and it was to obviate the too-well-known danger inherent in the project that this more complete measure was proposed. But the currency stringency was so great that the Government of India, rather than obstinately cling to their view, consented to avail themselves of the suggestion of the Secretary of State, and issued a Government Notification in November, 1864, which proclaimed that “sovereigns and half-sovereigns coined at any authorized Royal Mint in England or Australia of current weight, shall until further notice be received in all the Treasuries of British India and its dependencies in payment of sums due to Government, as the equivalent of 10 and 5 Rs. respectively; and that such sovereigns and half-sovereigns shall, whenever available at any Government Treasury, be paid at the same rates to any person willing to receive them in payment of claims against the Government.” The real par, however, was somewhat above Rs. 10 to the sovereign,⁸⁹ and the notification was therefore inoperative. The currency situation, on the other hand, continued to be as acute as ever, and the Government of India was again moved in 1866 by the Bengal Chamber of Commerce to take steps to make the circulation of gold effective. This time the Chamber insisted on the institution of a Commission of Inquiry “as to the expediency of introducing gold into the monetary system of India.” But the Government of India held⁹⁰ that “instead of a gold a paper currency has been introduced, in the expectation that it would prove a more convenient and acceptable circulating medium then either [pg 47] of the precious metals,” and consequently “it must be shown that paper has not proved and is not likely to prove a circulating medium adequate to the wants and suitable to the habits of the country before an endeavour is made to introduce gold in supersession of, or in addition to, paper.” A commission was therefore appointed to inquire into the “operation of the existing currency arrangements which were established under Act XIX of 1861,” and to report as to “what may be the advantage, as based on expediency, of the introduction of the legal tender of gold into India, in addition to that of silver.” After an exhaustive investigation the Commission came to the conclusion⁹¹ that owing to several causes the paper currency had failed to establish itself among the circulating media of the country, but that gold was finding a larger place in the transactions of the people.