On Tuesday, Mr. Chaplin moved. the adjournment of the House,
to call attention to the recent changes in the Indian ourreney. His main point was that by a stroke of the pen the Government of India had injured the Indian peasant, drat by depreciating the value of his hoarded silver, and secondly by artificially raising the value of the rupee, and so increasing the burden of his indebtedness. Sir William Har- court's reply was most unsatisfactory, and in reality con- sisted of little more than " catching out" Mr. Chaplin in certain aninor statements. Mr. Balfour followed in a speech of great lucidity. A Finance Minister in this country " who regarded it as a matter of absolute indifference what happened to silver" was, in his opinion, in a condition " approaching to lunacy." The Indian Government, like other debtors when at their wits' end how to meet their debts, had adopted the un- happy expedient of substituting for "a free and natural coinage a coinage as artificial and as unnatural as any issue of incon- vertible paper" ever issued ! They were driven to L.1:s a step " which since the suspension of the Bank payments in 1797 has never been taken either by England or by any country under the control of England." The Government failed to realise that England must suffer " if silver loses its place among the measures of exchange-value over a large part of the world." Mr. Balfour ended his speech in a way which indicates that he does not blame the Government for not taking up bimetallism, so much as for not realising the gravity of the situation. Incidentally, he mentioned that ten out of twelve members of the Gold and Silver Commission admitted the theoretical possibility of bimetallism.
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