I don't think it will be expedient
to base our reply to the Dutch Minister's representations
on a reference to the International Convention.
The
clause in the Hong Kong Ordinance which is quoted by
the Netherlands Minister provides a penalty for the
offence of "possessing without lawful authority or excuse
more than five pieces of counterfeit coin of a foreign
country". The provision does not require that the possessor shall know the coins to be counterfeit and have an
intent to utter them. In this respect the Hong Kong
law follows closely the United Kingdom Act of 1861 (Clause 23)
codes
in which similarly there were in effect two eins, the
one relating to offences against the King's Coinage and the
other to foreign coinage.
It is of importance to note that there
is no exactly corresponding offence provided in the United
Kingdom law for simple possession of counterfeit King's coins, but in Section 10 of the Hong Kong Ordinance and in
Section 11 of the United Kingdom Act of 1861 possession is an
offence only if the possessor knows the coins to be
and has an intent to utter them.
counterfeit and
The chief requirement of the International
Convention in this connection is (Article 5) that there shall
be no distinction in the scale of punishments for offences
relating to domestic currency and similar offences relating
to foreign currency, and in order to meet this requirement
the United Kingdom law has been revised by the Counterfeit Currency (Convention) Act 1935 which has the effect (Section
3(i)) of repealing those Sections of the 1861 Act which
constituted the separate code for offences against foreign
coin