35
Banks, owing to a too ready disposition to oblige the public, have found their treasuries encumbered with large quantities of these defaced and injured coins, their only outlet for which has been by remittance to the Mints in India for conversion into rupees. The average outturn, according to the assay table of the Bombay Mint, of 100 of these defaced coins is Rs. 225.106 as compared with Rs. 226.231 the outturn of clean dollars; but a far more important item is the loss of interest, frequently ruling here at 1 per cent. per month, so that at the present time defaced Foochow currency is quoted at a discount of 11 per cent., and much larger discounts have been sometimes required.
Your MEMORIALISTS would pray Your Excellency, should you deem any legislation at the present time desirable, that it may tend rather to raise than to lower the character of our local currency; and that no laws may be passed to enforce the acceptance of coins entirely unsuited to a civilised community.
It is considered that insurmountable difficulties would arise in the adjustment of the nice distinctions between those dollars which were only moderately chopped and defaced, and those which were too much injured. Some persons argue that so long as one cannot see through a dollar it should be accepted, however much "chopped" and defaced.
Your MEMORIALISTS respectfully submit that any legislation which would at all sanction this injury to the coin would be tantamount to legalising that which is everywhere regarded as an offence against the State.
Your MEMORIALISTS would desire to draw Your Excellency's attention to Ordinance No. 1 of 1894, whereby it is provided that the dollar of Mexico, or other silver dollar of equivalent value, as might from time to time be authorised by the Governor, should be the only legal tender of payment within the Island of Hongkong and its dependencies.
Your MEMORIALISTS submit that the dollar of Mexico is thus constituted, within the Colony of Hongkong, the Queen's current silver coin, to deface which by stamping thereon any names or words, whether such coin shall or shall not be thereby diminished or lightened, is in all other portions of Her Majesty's dominions regarded as a high crime and misdemeanour. The Hongkong minted dollar has been preserved from "chopping" for the last fourteen years, and a general desire is felt that the handsome American trade-dollar should be similarly guarded.
Rough as is the ruining of many of the dollars of Mexico, their genuineness has never been doubted; moreover the Chinese "chops" are not for one moment examined or regarded as any guarantee of quality, the intention being to attach an illegible certificate, and thus to throw the responsibility upon the recipient of the money.
Bad coins are frequently discovered full of "chops," but no one dreams of seeking redress by the attempt to find the owner of a stamp. Indeed the usual method of passing lightened pieces is so to "chop," braise and batter them that it is impossible to discover the place where a hole has been punched through the coin, the circumference being beaten down to fill the aperture.
It should be pointed out to Your Excellency that in Yokohama, Japan, Shanghai, Saigon, Manila, the Straits, Singapore, and Penang, a clean or uninjured dollar currency is insisted on; and your Memorialists would venture to inquire upon whether of two the loss, if any, consequent upon the defacement of the currency should, in justice, fall upon the man who has defaced coins in his possession, having himself defaced them or having received them so defaced, or on the man who requires his clean dollars to send, it may be, to Saigon for rice.
It will be manifest to Your Excellency that clean dollars and chopped dollars simultaneously form the circulating medium, and be both legal payment, but that one must be, as it has ever been, at a premium, or the other at a discount.
Your MEMORIALISTS would ask that the Government will either abstain from all legislation in the matter, leaving the dollars of every kind to find their own level of value as heretofore, or else that in any legislation the preference may be given to that which is clean and undefaced, leaving those who deface the coin, or who receive it so defaced, to dispose of it as best they may.
Your MEMORIALISTS would point out that this difficulty mainly arises regularly at this season of year in reference to the Foochow currency, the most mutilated of any, consisting mainly of Ferdinand dollars, which in the course of two months will find their way out of the Colony.
Your MEMORIALISTS believe that, owing to the increased expedition now required in the transaction of business, and the great convenience which has been found in the use of the one dollar notes issued by the Hongkong & Shanghai Banking Corporation, an increased disinclination is felt to accept the troublesome, unwieldy and tedious "chopped" and defaced currency: hence the effort which is now made by a section of the community to force it off.
Your MEMORIALISTS believe that, under the existing laws, by which the Mexican, or other dollar of equal value, is made the medium of legal payment within the Colony, a clean undefaced coin is intended; because by "chopping" and defacement its value is materially diminished, and hence that it is not contemplated that its acceptance in such state should be enforced.
Your MEMORIALISTS believe that there is no scarcity of currency such as is represented, and; moreover that the present action of the Banks in accepting, at a discount only, the "chopped" Foochow currency is well calculated to exercise a most wholesome influence upon the Chinese; and is likely to very much discourage the placing of the first "chop" upon the new clean dollars which arrive here every week from England and America.
It is with unmingled concern and regret that Your MEMORIALISTS have contemplated the threatened withdrawal of the most useful one dollar notes from circulation, the wisdom of which action on the part of the Home Government Your MEMORIALISTS are entirely unable to comprehend; and they believe that Your Excellency will in no way aid in that which they can only regard as retrogressive legislation, if it leads to the encouragement of the defacement of the clean dollar currency, upon which they will shortly be more than ever dependent.
Your MEMORIALISTS request that Your Excellency will have the kindness to examine for yourself the method of weighing and testing a single dollar by the ivory-(steel)-yard used by the Chinese Shroffs, also that you will examine the specimen dollars, and broken pieces enclosed, which constitute the material to which these handsome coins are untimely reduced. These small broken pieces of silver, each having to be weighed and minutely examined to detect spurious admixtures, form a wretched substitute for our scarce subsidiary currency, The 20, 10, and 5 cent pieces, although made of silver ten per cent. lower in "touch" than the dollar, are eagerly accepted on account of their convenience.
A large portion of the Chinese Customs duties being paid in Haiquan Sycee, into which the good silver of the broken dollars is constantly being converted at a fractional loss only, there is no real difficulty in the way of the natives disposing of this bullion; and hence it is wholly unnecessary that it should form any part of the Hongkong local currency, nine-tenths of which now consist of Bank Notes.
Your MEMORIALISTS believe that the Chinese petitioners have no grievance whatever, as they are fully aware of the nature of the defaced currency, and at Foochow are attached to it, and regulate the prices of their teas accordingly. When, on the other hand, these coins find their way to Hongkong, and are tendered to the merchants here in payment for imports-the merchants have simply to request that the payers will pay the coins into the Banks to the payees' credit. They will then fetch their fair bullion price. There are no less than six foreign Banks in the Colony, and as the policy of the managers is diametrically opposed, there is the less danger of any adverse combination.
Besides these there are a hundred native bullion dealers.
In conclusion Your MEMORIALISTS would desire very respectfully to express their opinion that, in view of the existing enactments on the subject, and pending the action to be taken by the Government upon the petitions of the community already under consideration at Home, for the supply of a British dollar for this Colony, the Banks and the public may very well be left to decide amongst themselves what coins they will accept and what they will reject.
For the Oriental Bank Corpn (signed) C. Morland Kerr,
Manager Hong Kong.
For the National Bank of India Ltd.
(signed) C. C. Thomson.
Agent Manager.
For the Comptoir d'Escompte de Paris Hongkong Agency (Signed) R. J. McKenzie
Agent manager
For the Chartered Bank of India Australia & China
(signed) William Dongal
At Manager.
(signed) J. G. Linstied.
Sharp &!
B. Goldsmith.
dolz Sex: Ch. Traders Ins? Coth
Birley