Page:The Economic Journal Volume 1.djvu/755

CIRCULATION OF THE RUPEE 733 It will be seen that the coinage of the year has been in each case substituted for this largest proportion, and I have then for every succeeding year applied to these figures the rates of shrinkage as indicated by the first table on page 723, which is as it were the bed of Procrustes on which all these coinages are racked;e.g. the estimates based on the coinage of 1874 have been arrived at by substituting 4'352 for 2'13 in the 1877 column in Table A on page 723, and 3'677 for 1'8, and so on. The result goes to show that the circulation in 1890 was about 127'286 crores. This table however makes no allowance for the wastage of the coin between the year of its coinage and the year when it contributes its largest share to the circulation. A glance at columns I and 2 of Table D, page 730, will show that the average yearly shrinkage of each coinage is 8'302 ? per cent. after its attainment of its maximum contribution. This deduction must of course be taken not upon the entire coin- age of the year, but only upon such portion of it as has passed into the circulation. The method followed in framing the table on page 734, whenever it differs from the last, is most easily understood by an example. Taking for instance the estimates on the coinage of 1877, the figures 1'641 and 13'304 have been reduced by 8'302 per cent. and the reduced figures substituted for them, namely 1'521 and 12'332. The sum of the differences between them and the former figures has been deducted from 13'480, reducing this entry to 12'239, which figure therefore replaces the coinage of the year. The whole of the foregoing is put forward with the utmost diffidence. I am painfully conscious that problems of this kind should be left to mathematicians, and that the reasoning here set forth contains at least one serious difficulty. It is worthy of remark that the contribution made by each coinage to the circulation is very similar, taking the volume of each coinage into account. The table on page 735 shows this very clearly. The last columns show the deviations from the general average, which is represented by the proportion 100: 73. I now propose to make some estimates on the basis adopted by Jevons. It is more ditficult to obtain a reliable result from Indian figures, for although it may be true that the rupee is not like the sovereign in 'its ubiquitous circulation, and that its mintage is con- fined to one country only, yet it is hoarded and melted to an extent that it is difficult to estimate. Jevons found, on an enumeration of one hundred thousand sovereigns in 1867, that rather more than ? This figure is the mean between 7'686 and 8'919, the averages shown for the 1874 to 1886 coinages excluding 1881, for which year the coinage was small and its movement irregular,