The Commission ended by urging upon the Government “to cause a legal tender of gold to be a part of the currency arrangements of India.” Now it was the turn of the Government to give effect to the recommendation. But, curiously enough, it did not go to the extent of adopting the recommendation of the Commission which it had itself appointed. Instead of making gold legal tender, as advised by the Commission, the only action the Government took was to issue another Notification on October 28, 1868, which simply altered the rate of the sovereign to Rs. 10–8 without doing anything further to avoid the evil consequence attendant upon that one-sided measure. Fortunately for the Government, even this correction of the rate did not induce any flow of gold into the circulation of the country. The currency troubles had by then subsided, and as no new pressure was exerted upon the Government this proved the last of two abortive attempts the Government made to introduce gold into India. ⁸⁹ Cf. Appendix A to the Minute by Sir William Mansfield on Gold Currency for India, H. of C. Return 79 of 1865. ⁹⁰ Resolution in the Financial Department dated February 3, 1866, in the _Fort William Gazette_ of the same date, under Notification No. 592. ⁹¹ For the Report of the Commission, _see_ H. of C. Return 148 of 1868. For the time being the problem was solved by the natural course of events. But, as subsequent events showed, the change to a gold standard would have been better for India⁹² [pg 48] and would have been welcomed⁹³ in the interest of Europe, which was then suffering from high prices due to the superfluity of gold. At this particular juncture the Government of India was really at the crossing of ways, and could have averted the misfortunes that were to befall it and its people if it had sided with the forces of change and replaced the silver standard by a gold standard, as it could most easily have done. That those in charge of Indian affairs should have thrown the weight of their authority against the change was no dishonest act deserving of reproach,⁹⁴ but it does furnish one more illustration of those disastrous human ways which often lead people to regard the situation in which they live as most secure just when it is most precarious. So secure did they feel about the currency situation that in 1870, when the Mint Law came to be revised and consolidated, they were content, as though nothing had happened or was likely to happen, to allow the silver standard of 1835 to continue pure and unsullied by any admixture of gold.⁹⁵ ⁹² It is true Prof. J. E. Cairnes was against the introduction of a gold standard in India; but later he withdrew his objections. Cf. his _Essays in Political Economy_ (London, 1873, pp. 88–90). ⁹³ Cf. J. R. McCulloch, _Dictionary of Commerce_, Ed. 1869, p. 1131.