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grievance and complaint, or else they are persons accused of something or other. What they demand is what the law requires, i.e., that they shall be heard; and they are right in believing that a Judge is supplied with two ears, in order that both plaintiff and defendant may be listened to; while his one tongue is reserved for a judgment to bind both, and end the strife. The facts are often complex, the incidents strange, the language foreign, the law new; and these considerations have led British Statesmen to agree that the men we send to India should be men of proved intellectual abilities.

This decision supports the view of policy, that as the nation becomes more and more educated, as many doors should be kept open as possible for honourable careers; and in my opinion it is most desirable that more of our educated youths should grow familiar with the attractions of Indian service, such as they are. There are reasons to believe that the raising of the age of admission to the open competition has had wide results, some of which were not foreseen. The examination is held in August, and the rule says that every candidate must on the previous New Year's Day have attained the age of twenty-one years, and not attained the age of twenty-three. The regulations are numerous, and they allow candidates to get marks in all kinds of knowledge. But while Cambridge does well, and Oxford better, the Scottish Universities have not lately been as successful as one would wish in finding men for the Civil Services. The success of Oxford in securing these prizes appears to hinge on the fact of the Civil Service curriculum, if I may use the word, fitting in well with the ordinary Oxford course, which includes political philosophy, ancient history, and kindred subjects.

The authorities of one University in Scotland, that of St. Andrews, have already detected these facts, and have started a movement to add these to the teaching in the classics. Without personal knowledge, I avoid dogmatizing, and will confine myself to what one learned pro

fessor has lately reported. He says: "A candidate who has been through the Oxford school of Litera humaniores is in a position to offer more subjects without going beyond his University course proper than any other candidate whatever. He is able to offer Latin and Greek, and thus to compete to the best advantage in the department of languages, especially as he generally has a fair knowledge of German, and often of French. He takes logic and moral philosophy, and is thus able to compete also in the department of philosophy, where he has the great advantage over the mere philosophy student that he has been specially trained in ancient philosophy, a recognised and important part of the examination. In the department of history he takes, as a matter of course, Greek and Roman constitutional history, each of which receives 400 marks, and the very important subject of political philosophy has formed a large part of his University studies. If he adds to this, as he often does, a competent knowledge of economics and economic history, it will be seen that he can profess a range of subjects which is quite beyond the reach of students from Universities where the lines of study are marked out on the principle of specialization. It is very hard, for instance, for a young Cambridge graduate to compete on anything like equal terms with such a man, even although his knowledge of the smaller number of subjects he is able to offer may be far more thorough and accurate.'

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I leave these matters of precision to the world of teachers, inside and outside of the Universities, as one of high importance to them, their scholars, and their sons. My present aim is rather to increase the public interest in India, and in general terms and common language to set forth what that career is which lies before clever and successful young scholars. I have not laid stress on the drawbacks, but rather dilated upon the high duties, the pecuniary comfort, and the variety of scenes in which the Indian civilian spends his active days. No man of any ability ever complained that this life of exile is a dull one. In

India there is always much to absorb the thought and delight the senses. Turn for a moment to those splendid sentences where Macaulay explains how Burke, whose eyes had never seen the Oriental world, did by force of his bright imagination "set things past in present view, bring distant prospects home." India and its inhabi

tants were not to him, as to most people here, mere names and abstractions, but a real country with real peoples. "The burning sun, the strange vegetation of the palm and the cocoa-tree, the rice-field, the tank, the huge trees older than the Mogul empire, under which the village crowds assemble, the thatched roof of the peasant's hut, the rich tracery of the mosque where the Imaum prays with his face to Mecca, the drums and banners and gaudy idols, the devotee swinging in the air, the graceful maiden with the pitcher on her head descending the steps to the riverside, the black faces, the long beards, the yellow streaks of sect, the turbans and the flowing robes, the spears and the silver maces, the elephants with their canopies of state, the gorgeous palanquin of the Prince, and the close litter of the noble lady--all these things were to him as the objects among which his own life had been passed. All India was present to the eye of his mind, from the halls where suitors laid gold and perfumes at the feet of sovereigns, to the wild moor where the gipsy camp was pitched, from the bazar, humming like a beehive with the crowd of buyers and sellers, to the jungle where the lonely courier shakes his bunch of iron rings to scare away the hyenas." These are the scenes mine eyes have seen, with which for thirty years and more I was familiar, and as I was fortunate enough to preserve fairly good health, and to keep on most pleasant and delightful terms with the native world, I may as well confess that I would like to live that life all over again.

THE RESTORATION OF A GOLD CURRENCY TO INDIA.

BY H. D. MACLEOD, M.A., BARRISTER AT LAW.

As the reasons which induced the Indian Government recently to pass a great and important Act to restore. its ancient gold currency to India, and to make the sovereign the standard unit of the empire, in accordance with the unanimous demand of India in 1864, are very imperfectly understood and greatly misapprehended, both in England and India, I hope, by a simple historical narrative, to make the matter clear.

It is necessary, however, to begin by removing two very widely prevalent misconceptions as to the monetary system of India. 1. It is a very widely prevalent misconception that silver has been exclusively the money of India from time immemorial, and that it will be very difficult to reconcile the people of India to the change from silver to gold. 2. That India is too poor a country to have a gold currency. Both these allegations are utterly erroneous. Gold was the original currency of India from time immemorial. India produces large quantities of gold, but no silver. Nevertheless, from prehistoric times vast quantities of silver have been imported into India to purchase gold. The ratio of gold to silver was I to 13 in Persia, but it was I to 8 in India.

The Phoenicians were the earliest seafaring traders in the world, and their commerce extended from Tartessus, or Tarsus, in the west, to Burmah and Siam in the east. They brought silver from Tartessus and exchanged it for the gold-dust of the lower Indus, which Sir Alexander Cunningham, the first authority on the subject, holds to be Ophir.

This gold-dust, however, was not coined in those early ages. It was in the form of dust, and it was kept in its natural state in small bags containing a fixed weight, and

passed as money. It is mentioned in Job, Isaiah, and Jeremiah. Darius exacted as tribute from the satrapy of the Punjab 360 talents of gold-dust, which he coined into darics. The other nineteen satrapies of the empire paid their tribute in silver.

The silver imported into India by the Phoenicians was confined to northern India. Sir Alexander Cunningham conjectures that silver was coined as early as 1000 B.C., thus gold and silver equally passed current as money in northern India from prehistoric ages. But there was no fixed legal ratio between them. Silver, however, having been coined for ages before gold, came to be considered as the standard, and the bags of gold-dust were taken at their market value.

The trade of the Phoenicians was with northern India, and the Mohammedans never conquered southern India. Consequently there was no silver coinage in southern India. Gold coin continued to be the standard in southern India till 1818, when the East India Company for the first time forced their silver rupee on them as their standard unit against the wishes of the people. These historical facts, are a conclusive reply to the allegation that silver has been the sole money of India from time immemorial, and that it is too poor a country to have a gold currency.

When the East India Company extended their dominion over India, they found the multiplicity of gold and silver coins in circulation an intolerable nuisance. There were 139 different kinds of gold mohurs, 61 different kinds of gold pagodas or huns, 25 different kinds of fanams, and 59 kinds of foreign gold coin in circulation; also 556 different kinds of silver rupees, and 155 different kinds of foreign silver coins. Altogether there were 994 different kinds of gold and silver coins in circulation, differing in weight and fineness. These vast numbers of coins were not attempted to be tied together by any fixed legal ratio; as, indeed, this would have been impossible, as they were issued by a multitude of independent princes, who claimed the right

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