COINAGE ORDINANCE IN COUNCIL.
1.-(1). The Mexican silver dollar of the standard weight and fineness specified in the 1st schedule to this Ordinance shall be the standard dollar coin of Our Colony of Hongkong, in this Ordinance referred to as the Colony.
(2) Every contract, sale, payment, bill, note, instrument and security for money, and every transaction, dealing, matter, and thing whatever relating to money, or involving the payment of or the liability to pay any money, shall, in the absence of express agreement to the contrary, be held to be made, executed, entered into, done, and had in the Colony, according to the standard coin of the Colony.
(3) The coins mentioned in the 2nd schedule to this Ordinance shall be British and treated as equal to the standard coin.
Hongkong dollars.
other
2. If, on the report of the Governor of the Colony, the Commissioners of Our Treasury and a Secretary of State from time to time declare that they consider any dollar not mentioned in the 2nd schedule to this Ordinance to be equivalent in value to the standard coin, or to any of the dollars therein mentioned, then, after the date fixed by the Governor in a proclamation stating the declaration, and setting forth in a schedule the same particulars with respect to the dollar as are set forth in the said 2nd schedule, this Ordinance shall apply as if the schedule in the proclamation were added to the 2nd schedule to this Ordinance.
3.-(1) If the Governor of the Colony at any time requests that any new subsidiary coins of less value than the dollar, whether of silver, copper, or mixed metal, be coined, and the Commissioners of Our Treasury and a Secretary of State approve such request, those new coins may be so coined under the direction of the Master of Our Mint, or at one of Our Mints in British India.
(2) Such new coins shall have either the same impressions as the coins specified in the 3rd schedule to this Ordinance (in this Ordinance referred to as existing coins) or such other impressions as may be approved of by the Master of Our Mint and by a Secretary of State.
(3) Any such new coin may be of the same denomination as any existing subsidiary coin, or of a different denomination.
(4) Every such new coin, if of silver, shall be of the same fineness as the existing silver coins, and of a weight bearing the same proportion to the weights of those coins as the denomination of the new coins bears to the denominations of the existing coins.
(5) As regards both the existing coins and the new coins, the remedy of fineness shall be three-thousandths, and the remedy of weight shall be such that the gross deviation in weight on such number of coins of any given denomination as amount to the value of a dollar shall not exceed that allowed on the British dollar.
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