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in the ridiculous position of keeping the legal tender coin of the Colony at a heavy discount as compared with
the notes of the two private Corporations.
The draft ordinance appears to contain all the necessary
provisions for providing the Colony with an unrestricted
supply of Currency Notes and at the same time affording
complete protection to the holders and adequate assurance
of convertibility.
For these reasons my Directors will welcome unreservedly
such legislation as may be necessary for making the draft
ordinance a part of the Statute law of the Colony.
I now desire to revert briefly to the application made
Apni by this Bank in 1898, repeated in February 1909, and still
under your consideration, for a restoration of the Bank's
former privilege of Note Issue, which on a technical point
lapsed in 1893. The institution of a Government Note
Issue would undoubtedly lessen materially the disadvantage
under which this Bank has suffered in the past, but should
the existing private privileges of Note Issue be allowed to
remain in force it would not entirely remove it, and I submit
that between the Mercantile Bank of India, Ltd. (one of the
oldest Banking Institutions in the Colony, and in its
Directorship and Shareholding list the most purely British)
and the other Eastern Banks there should no longer exist any
shadow of that inequality of privilege which has in the
past interfered most seriously with the profitable working
of our Hong Kong Branch.
Should therefore the Government Note Issue be merely
supplementary to the existing private Note Issues I must
continue to press for a favourable reply to our
application
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