625
For the year ended the 31st December, 1905, the Company's total receipts in Hongkong amounted to £25,931 and of that amount it lost £486 through being obliged to sell the silver coins at a discount, a loss of nearly 2%.
For the four months ended 30th April, 1906, the Board are informed that on the Com- pany's receipts of $88,237 the similar loss has amounted to $3.488, or nearly 4 %, which confirms the information as to the further depreciation which is taking place in coinage.
In view of the importance of the subject to the trading community and the desirability of such a state of affairs no longer prevailing in a British Colony, the Board beg to reiterate their hope that your Lordship will be able to initiate such measures as will dispose of the difficulty.
The Right Honourable
THE EARL OF Elgin, K.G., ·
Se..
HONGKONG.
Confidential.
&c.,
I have, etc.,
H. W. C. WERMER. Secretary.
fe.
GOVERNMENT HOUSE,
HONGKONG, 26th July, 1906.
MY LORD,—I have the honour to acknowledge the receipt of Your Lordship's despatch No. 121 dated the 27th June, 1906, enclosing a copy of a letter from "The Electric Traction Company of Hongkong Limited" with regard to the Circulation of Chinese subsidiary coin in Hongkong and requesting a report from me on this matter.
2. Before receiving this despatch I had already addressed Your Lordship confidentially on the 23rd instant on the subject both of British and Chinese subsidiary coins and stated that I had taken the only steps that appeared to me possible in the matter and likely to be effective in checking the fall in the dollar value of these coins and in eventually rehabilitat- ing them.
3. The Chamber of Commerce's reply of the 28th May, 1906, to the Star Ferry Com- pany's letter of the 30th April, 1906, copies of which formed Enclosure 2 to that despatch is equally applicable to the case of the Electric Traction Company and I suggest that a copy of the correspondence be sent to the Secretary to the latter Company for the information of his Board.
4. The Board believes that the extract from the "South China Morning Post" of the 27th March, 1906, sets out the facts (respecting Chinese subsidiary coinage) accurately. This as Your Lordship is aware from my previous communication is not entirely the case. The fact that the public see very little of Hongkong small coinage is not due to the simple reason that being of higher value than the Chinese coin it goes into the interior and does not return, unless in the shape of Chinese pieces after being reminted." The Chinese subsidiary coins are of the same intrinsic value as the Hongkong ones; the latter have of late been returning to the Colony in greater numbers than the banks can put on the market; and it is dollars and not the more heavily alloyed Hongkong subsidiary coins that are melted down in the Canton mint to make 20 cent pieces. Again the reference to the Viceroy of Canton robbing the Hongkong Government of their profits on the circulation of subsidiary coinage and to the duty of that Government not to allow any outsiders to participate in their lawful profits on minting and circulating coinage are quaint, considering the profits the Colony has inade from furnishing the Kwang Provinces with token coins. The statement that it is "owing to the scarcity of Hongkong money" that the public have nothing but Chinese coins in their posses- sion is incorrect as the public can obtain as much Hongkong subsidiary coinage at the bank as