and 8, C. 6 C. GAZETT B.—Per Anix Months, Taels. 6.50..50—all payable rance, Credit price, Us. 13.15 per Annum Snbecriptions will be: considered as renewed unless notice to the contrary be given before the expiry of the price of silver which ultimately roused the Chamber of Commerce here to holding a special meeting ofts members and passing a resolution hoping that something would be done, has impelled Englishmen in India to take a very much stronger measure: The Indian Currency Association, which has been formed to rouse the home government to a sense of the sufferings of the English in India, and urge it to adopt some-remedial measures, has pre-peed a petition for presentation to arbament, in which—as we learn from the Economist—a very doleful picture is drawn. "'The consequences of " persistent depreciation of the metal which still remains a standard of value for the Indian empire, and of violent fluctuations which are constantly and, indeed, daily occurring in the exchange value of the rupee, have been of the gravest kind. The loss to Government on paying the sterling obligations in England say be reckoned at eight hundred million rapees, or eighty million pounds sterling, since the commencement of the depression." All classes of the people, therefore, "suffer from-a load of taxation; the receipts from which are not applied 24 to any useful or, necessary put 28 'I'he trading community are harassed by the uncertainty and fluctuations off the'
CARE Mat pat! a exchange to such an extent. that legitimate trade is often replaced by speculative and gambling transactions," and the petition goes on to say' that but for the opening of the Suez Canal, arid the extension of railways in India, the country would have been by this time overwhelmed "in hopeless. financial embarrassment ' and disorder." The country will, however,' still be overwhelmed, the petition adds, unless the International Conference which is to meet in October succeeds in introducing the "double standard," or the government of India adopts the only remaining effectual remedy, a gold standard for India, A telegram high authority in Paris has informed us that the Conference is not likely to have any practical result; and this has throughout been the opinion of most of those who have given any consideration to the matter, and is also contem-. plated by tne authors of the petition we have quoted from. 'There remains the ssibility—and advisability—of. the indian government's giving up the free coinage of silver, which now prevails in' that dependency, and adopting the gold standard.
The Economist has Jittle difficulty in showing that the statements in the petition as to the desperate straits to which India is reduced, are greatly exaggerated. "That she has suffered," it says, "and still suffers' from the fall in silver and consequent disorganization of exchange is beyond question, but are her sufferings so intense, and so. likely to culminate in a total collapse, as. we, are asked to believe?" As material. for a reply to this question the Zeonomist gives the following' table Imports and Exports of Merchandise (excluding government: stores). in, year ending sist March, at quinquennial jutervalsduring the past twenty. years:
Imports. Exports. Total.
1872 30,811,000 63,185,000. 93,996,006 1877... 35,367,000. 60,962,000, 96,329,000 1882... 46,992,000 81,901,000' 128,893,000 1887 58,661,000 © 88,428,000 147,089,000 1892... 66,583,000 107,851,000 174,434,000 This shows a very large and contitiuons increase in the trade of India in the twenty years, and it is, noticeable that the percentage of increase is larger in imports than in exports. If the increase in the export trade had been very much larger, it would have been possible, to attribute it entirely: to the pili
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.