shown of 1,466,000 rupees. The exchange having fallen to an average of rather less than 1s. 3d., this surplus has been converted into an estimated deficit of 10,819,000 rupees. Notwithstanding the improvement of the revenue by 16,533,000 rupees over the budget estimate, the situation at the close of 1892 was fraught with a double danger to the Indian Government. The fall of silver—which had been such that during the year exchange could scarcely be maintained at 1s. 2 5⁄8d. for the rupee by the refusal to sell bills in India below that rate—might still proceed. And, secondly, in case of failure attending the Page 297 Brussels Conference, the United States would be inevitably driven to abandon her single-handed attempt to keep up the price of silver by her silver purchases. In that case an unexampled fall of silver might be expected. The only practical solution of the difficulty was the adoption of a gold standard for India, and in order to do so at a workable rate for the rupee it would be necessary to anticipate such further fall.
So much, in very brief, for the Government situation. For the commercial,—the harassment of trade by fluctuations of exchange, the check to investments, the handicapping of the Lancashire manufactures, and so on,—all this ground is still strewn with the débris of debate and difference. As far as the currency question, pure and simple, is concerned—such, that is, as is conceived of throughout this book, viz. metallic—it is almost incapable of presentation or realisation. Through the extraordinary preference of the Indian for the precious metals as metals