[65] An unfunded debt of £6,000,000, which has been wiped off lately out of the proceeds of the opium windfall, was incurred by the issue of India Bills during this period.
[66] For details of the method applied in these various investigations see Appendices to Reports of Head Commissioner of Paper Currency, 1894, 1895, 1896, 1897, and 1900. See also Mr. Harrison’s article on the “Rupee Census” in the Economic Journal for 1891.
[67] Stat. Journ. March 1897 and March 1903.
[68] This represents a per capita circulation of between Rs. 7 and Rs. 8.
[69] In 1899, the Government of India contemplated the possibility of a loan. See their despatch of August 24, 1899 (H. of C. 495 of 1913, p. 13):—“If India were afflicted with famine or other adverse circumstances in the earlier years of our new currency, and before an adequate reserve had accumulated, circumstances might arise in which borrowing to maintain the standard would become an absolute necessity. We should have preferred to have been armed against such a contingency ... not by actual borrowing but by obtaining power to borrow.... We have learnt with satisfaction ... that your lordship has stated in the House of Commons that borrowing would be resorted to if it should prove to be necessary.”
[70] See Chap. VII.
[71] See p. 215.
[72] The Government was on the point of sanctioning this advance when the urgent necessity for it came to an end, and the advance was not actually made.
[73] I will recur to this proposal in Chapter VII.
[74] For the movements of the Indian bank–rate in the autumn and spring of 1907–8, see the chart appended to Chap. VIII. Eventually, on January 16, 1908, the Bengal rate did rise to 9 per cent (the Bombay rate did not rise to this level until February 7); but this is not very abnormal in the winter, and the average rate for money in 1907–8 was lower than in the corresponding season of the two busy years 1905–6 and 1906–7.