The daily morning journal and courier., 1898-01-18

protesting against reopenlng lndla hints was as much a surprise to the English ministry as it was a disap- pointment to us. While the protest was not final, and while the English government in London could have over ruled the objection from India, yet such action would have been contrary to all precedents. As matter ot tact the home government, it is said, uhani- mously upheld the report.
 Frequent statements in our papers assert that the answer of India was dic- tated from London. It may be that the blind and unreasoning fury of the city of London directed against any sugges- ton of contributions or concessions to an international settlement of the cur rency question which should recognize silver, and which threatened a panic, and the overthrow of any mlplstry which attempted it, may have rendered the reply of the India government not wholly unWelcome; but the policy out lined in the letter of September 16, sign ed by the viceroy and his associates, must stand as the deliberate and unin- fluenced judgment of that government.
 ITO us the India situation is ineXpli- cable. Millions of people, most or them extremely poor, have for years invest ed all their savings in silver! These accumulations a few years ago were worth thousand million of dollars and more. To-day they are worth less than half that sum. By the closing of the India hints and the artificial gold value given to silver India Is at great dis advantage with the neighboring coun- tries, the exports of which are stimu- lated by the higher premium on gold, and they are robbing India of much of her manufacturing and export trade. The present policy intlicts upon India, as well. the evils of an insufficient and steadily lessening currency, evils which the vicissitudes of that dependency dur ing the past twelve months have served to emphasize.
 ''There was one oversight in commit nicating the so-called proposals to the India government. It was distinctly understood at ali our interviews to be a condition of the assent of any coun- try to an agreement that 1t should be entirely satisfied that the plan propos- ed, because of the adhesion of suffi- cient number of other nations, or other wise, would secure the maintenance of the parity proposed. Had this been full ly understood it is possible, though not probable, that a somewhat different an- swer would have been returned from India"
 Mr. Wolcott next enumerated the ob, stacles with which the commission had to contend, in which he included the re- markable drop in the price of silver, the c6incident tariff legislation in the United States and the statements of
 New York bankers in England, who. he said, sought access to English off,
 cials and assured them that any senti- | ment which had formerly. existed in the
 United States in favor of bimetallism
 was dead. Other statements made by | the bankers, according to MT. Wolcott. were the following: That the mission l was sent solely as a sop to few west ern republicans; that the country gen. orally favored the gold standard, and that the president of the United States shared this view. MT. Wolcott contin- ued:
 The statements were, Of course, un-
 true, but in support of them these peo- pie assumed to present interviews and statements of the director of the mint, a Ioldover from the last administration, l the late conmtroller of the currency, and equal precious legacy, now out of | public service and translated to Chi
 cago bank, and pretended statements in letters and interviews from the secre- tary of the treasury, to the effect that
 there was no chance of international
 or other bimetallism, and favoring the
 permanent adoption of the gold stand 1 ard.
 Nobody in Europe cared rap what
 the twosminor prophets thought or said,
 as nobody in this country cares, but the
 alleged statements of the secretary of | the treasury were a different matter. 1 We insisted that the letters must be forgeries, and the interviews fictitious,
 and I trust they were, for it was in-
 conceivable that member of the cabi- net would seek to undermine the efforts I of mission appointed by the president, and whose efforts he was cordially and l zealously seconding.
 The commission was also attacked from time to time by statements from
 extremists in the other direction, in- sisting that our efforts were sham and
 pretended, that we had no hope or ex- l pectation of success, that the president
 was secretly opposing us, that it was a |