The Indian Government, after an unexplained delay— probably due to
the illness from which, we are glad to see, Lord Kimberley is recovering—has decided finally not to place an import duty upon silver. It is apparently afraid of interfering with the course of trade any further. We dare say the Government is right ; but the first effect of its decision will be a great importation of cheap silver, or, in other words, a large remittance of bar-silver, from this country, instead of the India Council's drafts. It is here that the shoe pinches just now. If the merchants and banks will not buy these bills at their fixed price, the Council must in the end sell them for anything it can get, and the first object of closing the Mints will have been defeated. The Council has still six months in which to watch the edifect of that measure, but at present it looks very much
as if the laissez-faire men—witb[whom we: disagreed—were right, and that no action -whatever short of a change of standard, and that not a nominal one, would affect the course of exchange. We must wait ; but we never saw the great experts in finance so completely bewildered before. They really do not know, and admit they do not know, the effect of any step.
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