369
100 dollars would give (opp) per dollar. Adding to this, interest for the six weeks voyage to England and six months usance.
s. d.
AQ
The
have nearly 4/9 per dollar equivalent drawing rate from Hong Kong. I therefore infer that it would be necessary for exchange on England to be at least 4/9 in order to maintain such a rate between China and India as to make it profitable to have dollars consigned.
The Indian exchanges during 1865 averaged
By Bombay R. 217. To per $100
Calcutta R. 219.1/2 per $100, and only during that year passed Rs 220.
By the last mail the exchange on Bombay was R. 219.
The impression with which the trade was left must be that it was not profitable to import dollars.
It cannot be realised in the early stages of the trade, because it was not the chopped dollar (the currency of Hong Kong) that was at a premium but the clean Mexican dollar which is used in the commerce between China and Japan.
Hong Kong dollars cannot at the outset be expected to do more than supersede the currency of the place, and a premium on clean Mexicans will not therefore help us until our dollars are sufficiently known in China and Japan to be taken as freely as clean Mexicans.
Curiously enough, however, at the present moment dollar is scarce...