RESTORATION 
107 
rapidly passed away and a great fall of prices began. 
§ 3. Restoration of the gold pound. 
Following the spirit as well as the letter of the 
Cunliffe Report, the Treasury did not content itself 
with observing the limit laid down in the Minute, but 
so arranged its incomings from taxation, interest- 
bearing loans, and other sources that they exceeded 
its outgoings for current expenditure, redemption of 
debt, and other purposes. The result was that during 
the fiscal years April 1, 1920, to March 31, 1923 (or 
more exactly in the period between March 31, 1920, 
and March 28, 1923), it was able to burn £50,000,000 
of Currency Notes besides adding to the reserve 
held against such notes £7,000,000 of silver coin 
withdrawn from circulation and £16,500,000 Bank 
of England Notes.? 
But as it loves to do good by stealth, it made no 
parade of the fact that it was steadily redeeming 
non-interest-bearing debt in the shape of paper 
currency and substituting interest-bearing debt. 
Nobody could discover in the national accounts any 
record of the seventy-three millions spent in with- 
drawing currency, any more than they had been able 
to discover any entry of the three hundred millions 
received by issuing it. Just as the receipts had been 
disguised as money obtained by issuing Treasury 
Bills or bv getting ."dvances from Government De- 
partment, -) were the expenses disguised as money 
spent in i deeming Treasurv T'lls and repaving 
1 It is true that in the same period the Bank of England 
Notes increased by £19 m., but this is not to be set off against 
the withdrawals mentioned in the text. It was entirely due 
to the fact that the other banks were persuaded to exchange 
their gold for bank-notes, and there seems no reason to 
believe that the notes left their vaults any more than the gold 
had done, while at the Bank of England the gold was simply 
stored away against the notes.