Enclosure 2.
58
hand you have approved of resumption of the policy of redemption of redundant Hongkong Subsidiary coin. To render that policy effective the elimination from competition with our subsidiary coin of coins of the Canton Lint is now necessary, since no success has attended the efforts to induce the Canton Government to stop the issues of small silver coins from its mint.
These circumstances, and the striking example furnished by the boycott of the Hongkong Electric Tramways Com- -pany for demanding legal tender in payment of its fares, have rendered necessary the consideration of the question of prohibit- -ing the circulation in the Colony of foreign silver coins, which is an essential feature of the scheme referred to in paragraph 2 of this Despatch.
4.
The Executive Council being in favour of such prohibition I asked the opinion, in a letter copy of which is enclosed, of the British Members of the Chamber of Commerce, sum- -marising the more obvious reasons for the policy of prohibition. The second of the reasons advanced in the letter is alone a
sufficiently powerful one to justify the rehabilitation of the Hongkong coinage.
It is no doubt true that a very few of the lower class of employees are paid in notes and that they benefit accordingly, (even after deduction of the Money Changers' com-
-mission which varies according to the likelihood of the amount
to be squeezed out of each individual client) as compared with
their less favoured fellow labourers; but there is no doubt what-
-ever that the great majority are the victims of careless or miser- -ly employers, or of compradores and shroffs entrusted with cash
payments on behalf of firms and others, who are of course debited
with the full total amount in the standard coin of the Colony.
Again there are jinricksha pullers, chairmen and others whose fares are regulated by law and who accordingly suffer an unjustifiable loss on each occasion of payment so long
as the coin tendered is at a discount.
It is therefore to be anticipated that the