F
165
F
cast foreign trade of China and Japan.
Made
received
A similar proposal was made by my Predecessor Sir John Bowring. Some years after but it was not favourably received at that time by the Lords Commissioners of the Treasury, chiefly, I believe, on the ground that the Mercantile
Advocates for the plan were confined to Traders at Canton who had some dissension among themselves which prevented the introduction of that plan, and whose objections will be till the interest it was to advocate any scheme which if it succeeded would relieve them from difficulty, and if it failed would cost them nothing.
Besides this, it would have been premature at that time to have coined dollars while British money remained under the terms of H.M.'s Proclamation the standard of value in Hongkong.
All this, however, is now changed. Dollars pass current in large quantities soon in Shanghai, and have been declared by