My Lords, that Her Majesty's Government should take the whole of the arrangements into their own hands.
My Lords would therefore propose that the Governor in Council should be advised to pass an Order for the repeal of the existing Proclamation relating to the Currency of Hong Kong, and to issue a new Proclamation declaring the Dollar of specified weight and fineness to be the sole current coin and legal tender for payments in the Colony, and directing that the public accounts of the Colony be kept in dollars and cents. And that existing obligations contracted in the denomination of British Money be discharged by the payment of dollars at the rate of one dollar to 4/2d.
My Lords think it right at the same time to observe, with reference to the minutes of Colonel Haines and Colonel Caine, that the reasons which have governed their Lordships in the opinion that alteration should be made in the scale of salaries of the Civil servants of the Colony, computed in the dollar, do not apply to the payment of the troops. In the case of the Army, whose pay is computed and voted by Parliament in the denomination of British Sterling, it is the duty of Her Majesty's Government to provide that, when the pay of troops on foreign...
Page 358