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passing modifying duty. Order in Council the amount of stamp duty on short term promissory notes according to a scale, the details of which were drawn up by Mr. Lister, the Stamp Collector.
I also laid before Your Lordship, together with other documents, a minute by the Collector in which he recommended the reduced tariff on the following grounds :-
"All experience shows that duties which are too prohibitive defeat their own end. I consider that some such tariff as I append would not only be equitable to the Chinese, but profitable to the Government.
3.
On referring the papers to the Attorney General to draft Order in Council embodying Mr. Lister's proposed tariff for short term promissory notes, Mr. Phillippe pointed out an objection to it founded on his experience of the Chinese, when sitting in the Summary Court in Singapore, where he observed they invariably took promissory notes payable on demand, although it was not intended that they should be paid for a year or more, and in this way evaded the duty. As the Attorney General
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