swamp some very respectable people, as well as
some others who were not quite respectable,
and to make a great many others, more or less
respectable, as the case may be, shake in their
limited liability shoes. The fact, indeed, has
become apparent. Everybody has plenty of
money. Everybody's name is worth any amount,
or should be so. Everybody's paper is
irreproachable, as far as his real capacity for meeting
it is concerned. But, irreproachable as paper
may be, people will not go on taking it for ever.
The representative is beyond question, but the
original must be forthcoming occasionally, just
for the look of the thing. The original is
precisely the difficulty, for rupees are not to be had.
The case is something like this: We have most
of us seen or heard of a card-party at which coin
somehow gets scarce. It must be somewhere, for
it was in circulation at the beginning of the play;
but everybody says he has lost. If the players
are not sufficiently hardened to write cheques,
the play must come to an end. This is very
nearly what is threatened in Calcutta, and more
or less at the other presidencies—where even
paper is now beginning to fail. Where are the
rupees? is the question asked on all sides.

The fact is, that the currency, which was
sufficient for former requirements, is altogether
inadequate for the present. Before the development
of India from a private speculation conducted
by a Company (how devoutly some of its
members wished that they could have enjoyed
limited liability!) to a grand Imperial concern,
open to all comers, with the assurance that
laws were just, that property was secure,
that protection of every kind was obtainable,
there were enough rupees, and to spare, for
all purposes. But times have changed, and
not only persons, but things have changed
with them. We have seventy-two thousand
British troops in India instead of thirty
thousand as of old, all having daily wants
which must be mainly supplied in the country.
The native army, though greatly reduced, still
exists to a considerable extent, and even the
proportion of natives who would have been
employed under the old system must live
somewhere. We have railway engineers, contractors,
and general employés, amounting to a considerable
number, who were never heard of in the
old days. We have merchants, speculators of all
kinds, shopkeepers, and miscellaneous persons
attracted by the hope of employment, increased
and increasing in numbers, to an immense extent.
We have shipping at all the ports in an
augmented proportion, requiring stores, and giving a
permanent addition to the shore population. All
these various classes have contributed to give a
stimulus to trade, which, once comparatively
stagnant in the interior for want of communication,
is now opened up by the railways which
stretch on all sides to the sea. The steady
demand for tea, and the sudden rush for cotton,
have alone given an impetus to commerce, calculated
to create unexpected conditions. And to
meet all these requirements there is nothing in
the way of currency but the old original rupee.

Another cause has also contributed to make
the rupee the scarce article which it is just now.
The enterprise and energy of our countrymen
have produced a state of prosperity which
reflects upon every class of natives. The cultivator,
the artificer, the labourer, all command
better prices or better wages than hitherto. The
majority of them not only supply their wants,
but save money. The fact is very gratifying,
but it is a source of some inconvenience. For
the lower class of natives (to say nothing of the
higher classes, who hoard in great heaps, both
money and jewels, sometimes for political pur-
poses) have no idea of saving money, except in
specie. They do not understand investments;
they have no belief in bankers' accounts; and
it is whispered that this want of confidence,
always strongly marked among them, has been
further increased by the idea that peace is not a
very certain article to invest in, and, that in the
event of another revolt, it would be more easy
to draw cheques than to get them paid. At the
best of times the currency in India is not treated
with the same respect as in this country. There,
if a man wants any gold ornaments, he very
likely gets some of the old gold mohurs from
the bazaar, and hands them over to a workman
who will make them up in any form he pleases
—bringing his little furnace into the verandah
if required, and executing the work on the spot.
The native jewellers themselves frequently
employ the same coins, and the arrangement has
this advantage that the material is absolutely
without alloy. The natives disdain ornaments
which are not manufactured of the purest metal,
rejecting even the British sovereign, for such
purposes, with contempt; and Europeans who
have become accustomed to the productions of
(say) Delhi or Cuttack, share the prejudice, and
decline to be victimised by the concoctions of
their countrymen, which look very pretty, but
are not worth a tenth of their cost, whereas
native jewellery is worth, at any rate, what it
will weigh. But the gold mohur being no longer
in circulation, the native is not tempted to
tamper with it or hoard it up.

The case is different as regards the rupee.
This is the regular circulating medium, and
when Ram Chunder or Nubbee Bukhsh. has
any of its representatives to spare, he takes care
to keep them in a tangible form. If given to
ostentation, he has them made into bangles for
himself, his wife, or his children, whom i'ashion
allows to wear such articles in any number, so
that the whole family may go about their
business every day jingling their united capital
to the envy of less fortunate neighbours. But
it is evident that, whatever fashion may say, a
man's wealth may get too considerable to be
easily carried about, and moreover it is dangerous
to invest it in very young children, who
are continually being murdered by admirers of
their ornaments. The more prudent, therefore,
keep their savings in coin, and as they seldom
live in houses with doors, they generally
dispose of such savings by burying them in the
ground. In this manner a large proportion of