Currency Measure forced through, not only without adequate investigation, but in the teeth of the majority of those whose opinions were laid before the Viceroy, and in the teeth of the majority of the witnesses examined before the Currency Committee.  But arbitrary and tyrannical action seems to be the order of the day with the Gladstonian Government; and it is worthy of notice in this connection that it forced an Opium Commission on India merely to buy a few votes in the House of Commons, and, with the grossest injustice, provided that India should pay for a part of the cost.  The outcry raised has, indeed, brought about a reduction of the charge that was to have been made, but, from a statement made in the “Times,” I observe that the Government has clung to the travelling expenses of the members of the Commission, which are to be charged to India, and probably with the view of proving that extreme meanness is not one of the national failings.

As the English reader might imagine that the Indian Government was solely responsible for this measure being passed into law, I may point out that the decision of the Cabinet was required and obtained in connection with the Currency Measure.  From such a Government the producers of India, while they have everything to fear, can have nothing to hope.  Our sole hope depends upon its being turned out, and replaced by an Unionist administration which will either annul the suicidal policy that has been adopted, or at least suspend its action till a full and searching investigation has been made into all the immediate and all the consequential results that must arise from the measure in question, should the Government be able to force up the gold value of the rupee.  If the facts adduced in this chapter are substantially correct, the verdict cannot be doubtful, for these facts prove that the Government proposes to levy what is practically a heavy export tax on the products of India, and in a form, too, most injurious to its best interests, and ultimately to the finances of the State.  And I say in a form most injurious, because the Gladstonian Government (for the Cabinet is distinctly responsible for the policy proposed to be carried into execution) has practically adopted a policy of protection, not for the benefit of the productions and industries of India, but for the protection and encouragement of the productions and industries of those silver-using countries which now compete with India.  Of all the grotesquely ludicrous policies that have ever been adopted by perverted human reason this surely is by far the most absurd.  By one and the same measure to stamp down the progress of India and promote the progress of other silver-using countries; to diminish the traffic on Indian railways, and correspondingly increase the traffic in such countries; to diminish the volume of India’s trade and increase that of other Eastern countries; to raise a comparatively small sum for the Indian Exchequer at a vast cost to the producers