The world is growing small, and the inter-relation of its
peoples unpleasantly close. One would hardly think that the comfort of most Anglo-Indian families in England depended upon the pliability or obstinacy of President Cleveland ; but so it is. Silver, which Anglo-Indians, in spite of a quarter of a century of experience, think " ought " to be worth 60d. per ounce, has fallen to 471d., a redaction of more than a fifth, and is only kept from falling to 42d. or thereabouts by the Bland Act, under which the Treasury of the United States must coin 25,000,000 a year in silver at a fixed price. As nobody will have the silver except at market value, the Treasury is getting overloaded, and Mr. Cleveland proposes to suspend the Bland Act, and, of course, sell the immense heap of useless metal. The release of this store, and the disappearance of the Washington Treasury as purchaser, would give a finishing blow to the silver market, and the mining kings are trying to induce Congress to maintain the law. The struggle is not over; but the miners will probably fail. Nobody can buy a majority in Congress ; the people have, become ashamed of the cry for "the dollar of our fathers ;" and the bankers, who are alarmed, in the United States always win in such struggles. The Act will be repealed, if not this Session, then the next; and the unlucky Anglo-Indians will lose a clear third of their nominal incomes. There is no remedy except a rapid increase in the demand for silver in India and China, and of this there is no sign.
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