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for remitting silver to India and elsewhere.
15.
Those who expect that a trade which has thus reverted to old and settled practices can be unsettled, and that the habits and usages of 300 millions of people can be altered by any proclamation of a small foreign colony like this, which has no authority or pretension enabling it to dictate a currency to China, cannot fail to see that the expectation of future premium on dollars has been at the bottom of all the hopes connected with the Mint.
17.
It is another improbable in the highest degree. It is the old story Rusticus expectat dum defluat amnis, at ille Labitur, et labetur in omne volubilis.
16.
I am sorry to have to go again over ground already traversed in part by the Commission which I appointed to inquire into the Mint and perhaps more fully dealt with by Your Lordship in my Despatch No 172 of last December. The fallacy is apparently the same which induces Sir Hercules Robinson and the Master of the Royal Mint to think it either possible or desirable for the local Government to deal with or regulate the Currency of Hong Kong separately from the general currency of China. It is almost incredible that Mr Graham should suggest or believe that the Coinage of a "Model Currency" of five or ten ...