Separate weighing, and paying for each transaction is indefensibly barbarous and inconvenient. Undoubtedly it is so, but the fact that such has been the custom of the Country for centuries - and also that the whole body of Chinese Officials is interested in maintaining a practice which gives them innumerable opportunities for cheating, or as it is called here "squeezing" Government debtors and others, is not the less a fact of extreme importance when calculating the chance that people will pay a premium for Minting silver into a shape, which it has no increased power in China.
57. With the exception of the gratuitous coinage of $376,859 at the commencement from defaced coins, when for some months seignorage was charged by the Mint, the whole work done by that establishment for which seignorage was paid since you last May to the 30th ultimo, if computed in dollars, has amounted only to $961,726.
58. Your Grace is aware there are numerous other very interesting questions connected with this subject, quite beyond the scope of this present communication. I must however particularize the surprising difficulty of getting rid of subsidiary coins, which one might have imagined would have been eagerly welcomed as a substitute for the little broken pieces of ...