26th July. Ir the Hon. Mr, Justice Ameer Ah is right in the article by him published in the Wineteenth Century for March last, the Indian Government in introducing a gold standard and making the rupee a token worth the fifteenth part of a sovereign however silver may decline, has consulted the true interests of the people of India well as of the Europeans in India, Lhe fall in the gold value of the rupee, he says, has not been a blessing to the people in general. Lord Roberts in a speech the other day gave it as one of the advantages of our rule in India that wages had doubled: but we now read that since 1873, when the rpee was in the neighbourhood of 2s., there has been 110 appreciable rise in wages. On the other hand, to the confusion of some economists, the purchasing power of silver has fallen markedly where rice is concerned.
In 1873" the average retail price of common rice was 1 rupee 10 annas per maund; in 1893 it is 3 rapees 13 annas. The labourer therefore gets no more pay than he did before, and his rice costs him more than double, and he, like the Government, is on the verge of starvation. Ihe position of the Government is painted very powerfully "Its vaunted surpluses have turned into deficits, ever growing. All new production work practically stopped
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.