Page:The Economic Journal Volume 1.djvu/747

CIRCULATION OF THE RUPEE 72.? The results given in Table A have been arrived at by taking the arithmetical mean of the censuses of the eight provinces, which will be found in detail in Appendix B. It will be observed that the provincial figures, and those in Appendix B, of which each is the arithmetical mean, though they agree in showing a very regular sloping away or disappearance of each year's coinage, are of varying composition. The explanation of this fact is to be found in a consideration of the several amounts coined by the three mints, and the action of Government and trade regulating the distribution. Thus the circulation of Madras, when the local mint was idle for five years after 1835, and stopped altogether in 1869, naturally consisted chiefly of the coinages between 1845 and 1869. Its trade being also local, this tendency has stiflened, and the result is that in this Presidency and in Mysore the coin circulating is rather past middle age. Of recent years, it has draw?l largely from Bombay. The Punjab is largely fed by re- mittances froin the currency department of the same Presidency: the railway receipts which accumulate at Aimere and the salt revenue at Sambhur are also utilized for supplying this province and the North-West. From 1884, extensive expenditure for military defences commenced on the Punjab frontier, resulting in special remittances towards Quetta. The Hyderabad circulation is fed by trade, through the postal revenue, and by specie from Bombay to pay for the Em'opean staff stationed there. Bombay of course supplies itself, and sends out specie on Government account to its own districts to a considerable extent. The rest of its i?lternal supply is obtained by traders taking coin to pay for cotton in the west and wheat and seed in the north and east. 1885 and 1886 it was found unnecessary for Government to supply Karachi, as was usual, owing to the accumulation of the year's earnings of the North-West railway being available. The North- West Provinces are supplied by currency remittances from Bengal and Bombay, and largely by trade, the capital being the half-way house of Upper Indian commerce. Bengal is fed by its own mint, by Government remittances from Bombay, and by trade. The Central Provinces draw from Bombay and Bengal through traders purchasing wheat, and are also supplied by Bombay Government remittances. Assam ?s largely dependent on rupees filtering through Eastern Bengal, and its currency is much worn, and of an old age. Burma, in the winter of 1873-74, received two and three-quarter crores of rupees to pay for rice exported thence for the Bengal famine, and has recently, owing to the annexation of Upper Burma, and the withdrawal of the peacock rupee of Kin?