As we said last week, the world is all locked
together. The price of silver has risen to 300. an ounce, and the relief, which amounts to more than 8 per cent., on the home re- mittances of India will probably pay for the Chitral Expedition. The rise is immediately due to the expectation that the Japanese will demand an indemnity of at least £50,000,000, which must be remitted in silver, but is also caused, accord- ing to the Times, by a steady increase in the regular demand for the metal all over the world. So strong is this demand, that we are told the great dealers in silver begin to think that 30d. an ounce may be taken as the pivot-price of silver, just as 60d. an ounce was for the first sixty years of the century. In the face of the advance in metallurgical science, we distrust these calculations ; but if they are correct, they will greatly simplify the currency question of the future. It is not the fall which so worries commercial men and the Indian and Russian Governments, so much as the instability of the price, which baffles foresight and makes Budgets almost worthless.
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