coin at that time,
of the supply of
eupply of coin at
Do
the
Chinese community, in exhausting the Treasury stock, had sufficiently supplied
The new shipment.
itself.
- shipment arrived on: __ March 226 and $48,000 of it, or nearly
one
third,
was issued in a week, to the
Banks, the Commissariat, and the public,
I must not be forgotten that
ive
how the want.
going
of the Army
and
Navy to provide for. Every ship, before going to the Front, obtains a supply of coin, because these coins pass anywhere in
Japan, and,
China
or
abroad
and, except
silver or Japanese money, nothing else
is to be had.
The
total amount of
subsidiary coin supplied to Hongkong
to date has been $2,133,881 including some copper, which has not been exported. Of the silver, probably not ten per cent is in the Colony.
I trust I have shown the necessity for keeping this Colony supplied
with
small coin, and the impossibility of the Government's exercising any control over its exportation except by declining to issue it at all. I now pass to consider the risk of these
coins
being hereafter thrown upon the Colony for redemption
in a worn or mutilated condition. I venture to think that this risk is
small, and that, even
if it
exists, which I
doubt, it would be easily averted.
It should be borne in mind that these
coins are not a legal tender
of more than $2.00
The
HongKong
subsidiary coinage has been in circulation
for
nearly a quarter of a century. During
all that time no worn or mutilated
coin has ever
been seen in the Treasury
I am inclined to think silver coin would never become worn in China
as it does in England, for the people
do not
carry
it loose in their pocket,
but always most carefully in a pouch
or