CVER.
Enclosure 2.
338
Hongkong and Shanghai Banking Corporation,
Hongkong, 5th. March, 1908.
Dear Sir Matthew Nathen,
I bave been thinking over the question of the
Bank quaranteeing the coinage of a certain amount of British Dollar per annum, to induce the Indian Miots to revert to the former chares of 14 seigniorage.
The amount must be large to have any effect
and considering the currency changes in adjoining countries since the British Dollar was first introduced, and the efforts now beine
made to get the Chinese Goverduent to adopt a new coin to cir-
-culate es legal tender throughout that empire, together with the
uncertainty as to what conditions kexico will finally naxe for the
coinage of an export dollar, I regret that I do not see my way
just now to commit the Bank to a quarantee.
heferring to the copy letters sent you, it
seems to me they can hardly be used in support of a request for
reduction in the seigniorage as they rather bear out the stand
taken by the Indian Mints as to actual cost.
Mexico is so largely interested in the
export of silver that I cannot help thinking she will make her
mint charges for a dollar in demand for China as low as possible
and may therefore modify the present proposals.
I am advising our San Francisco Agent that as
a Eritish Bank it is for us in the interests of British trade and
crestige in China to push the British Dollar and to see that it
is not handicapped in cost of minting as compared with its rivei
the