Understanding Caste

grand themes like metropolitan exploitation of the colonies" (p 30). (See p 135 for a rather disparaging remark of Keynes on this matter.) But in regard to the Council bills, for his lectures at Cambridge and London on the Indian monetary system, was Keynes not aware of Goschen's unequivocal assertion in his report to the Mouse of Commons in 1876 that these bills affected India's ability to import silver, or of the series of articles on silver and the home charges that Bagehot wrote at that time (reprint published by H S King, London, 1877)? Bagehot had no hesitation in calling these charges "tribute", for "such economically it is". Among the effects of imposing a tribute on the industry of a dependent country, Bagehot gave the first place to driving away all cosmopolitan capital which can carry on business elsewhere. And, as a rule, the effect of the tribute will be to lower prices. Given the usual assumptions of classical economics, the employment effect had to wait for recognition till Keynes's General Theory, though some empirical studies of the early 19(X)s were pointing to it. Marshall too had referred to them in memoranda and oral evidences submitted to various enquiry bodies during the 1880s and the 1890s. Speaking before the Gold and Silver Commission, he stated categorically that "I consider that this [Council bills representing payments fixed in gold) is a disturbing element in the trade of India". In the controversy with Ohlin on reparations (Economic Journal, 1929) Keynes refused to perceive the shifts of purchasing power associated with international transfers. That the process of effecting these large transfers (laying aside for analysis their specific content) relentlessly over decades generated massive secular deflation and arrested growth was never recognised.