On Saturday, 23 June 1888, Marshall wrote J.N. Keynes1 to ask him to look over a comment he had written on a paper by J.S. Nicholson, so that they would be able to discuss its contents the following Monday. Marshall had been asked to write the comment by G.H. Murray, the secretary to the Gold and Silver Commission, for private circulation to its members to aid them in the preparation of their Final Report. John Neville Keynes duly recorded in his diary entry for Monday, 25 June, that ‘Marshall was with me nearly the whole of the morning talking over another paper3 he has written for the Currency Commission. He has got into controversy with Nicholson.’

Marshall's paper was eventually published by the Commission, despite the original intention of its private circulation only. However, John Maynard Keynes in 1925–6 decided not to include it in his edition of Marshall's Official Papers with the other material Marshall had prepared for the Commission. This omission is all the more surprising since T.E. Gregory during September 1925 had alerted Keynes to its existence while a copy of the ‘note’ was also preserved with Marshall's private papers at Balliol Croft.

Short though it is, Marshall's paper itself is of considerable interest. As John Neville Keynes confided in his diary, it is yet another example of Marshall's controversialist proclivities aroused when he felt his position to be misrepresented as was clearly the case in his view in the paper by Nicholson complained of.