The fall in silver still continues, and is beginning seriously
to- affect the financial arrangements of the India Office, as well as the commerce of India. On Wednesday the India Office sold only half its drafts on India, leaving £600,000 to be provided for in other ways ; and on Thursday the fall in silver, partly from panic, amounted to 4 per cent. The price may be taken now at 490. per ounce, with a downward tendency, and the total loss, therefore, on all silver remittances is 19 per cent. ; while the loss to Government on remittances from India is at the rate of £3,000,000 a year, or something like 6 per cent, on the entire revenue. The Times hints that a loan will be required at once, and though financiers are indignant at the prospect, this policy can hardly be avoided. With an Afghan war at hand, the Home Government must suspend its drawings on India and borrow, and it may just as well begin at once. What the poor Anglo-Indians will do with their savings subjected to an income-tax of 4s. in the pound it is hard to say, but they are not suffering much more than everybody else.
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