Our experience at Hong Kong, for I presume after experience that no one will advocate the establishment of a Mint at Singapore!
Your Lordship will perceive that in the Estimates for the Year 1869 I have included a sum of $60,000 as Revenue from the Mint - not that I anticipate receipts from seignorage to that amount, but because I am willing to allow the probable profit from the coinage of the 10 and 20 cent pieces to be included as Mint Revenue in order to show the Establishment in the annual estimates in as favourable a light as possible. At the same time I cannot disguise from Your Lordship that I have fears myself as to our ability to coin a sufficient quantity to attain even that low result.
Mine have been poor delays and accidents - though of a Minor Kind - have been recently occurring at the mint and the small coinage has been again deferred. Therefore I think the difficulties here in the way of successful minting are unusually great - not arising through inferiority of the staff or the Machinery.
Finally, I would observe that great as is the embarrassment caused to the Colony by undertaking an experiment so novel and costly as the establishment of a Mint on a small Island, where the local Authorities have no special facilities for informing outside the limits of the Colony.
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