CO882-(1-2) — Page 316

PUBLIC RECORD OFFICE

Reference :-

C.O. 882

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PUBLIC RECORD OFFICE, LONDON

ALLY WITHOUT PERMISSION OF THE BE REPRODUCED PHOTOGRAPHIC- COPYRIGHT PHOTOGRAPH-NOT TO

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No in exchange for the accumulations of notes. alteration, however, was made in the formal agree- ment with the Bank.

A third defect was of a more fundamental character, and far more difficult to deal with. It was found that the notes did not really represent sums of 5 and 10 actual rupees, but sums of 98. 2d. and 188. 4d. in British money; and that instead of circulating freely, as was intended, in payment of labourers' wages, they were practically confined, as was all British money, to Government transactions. The explanation of this lay in a very complicated state of circumstances, which had grown out of successive changes in the law and practice of the colony, with respect to the values assigned to coins in passing

current.

From our conquest of Mauritius in 1810 to the end of 1825, accounts were kept, both by Govern- ment and the generality of the public, in dollars and cents; a currency of account which, before our time, had begun to displace the older currency of livres, and, like dollar currencies elsewhere, had come to be discharged in coin of inferior value to the silver dollar of Spain, which this dollar of account no doubt originally represented. In 1818, and for several years afterwards, the circulating medium appears to have consisted almost exclu- sively of inconvertible dollar or rupee notes issued by the Government and Bank of the day, which, from their excessive quantity, greatly depreciated the currency, at one time as much as 30 per cent. Omitting this interval, the usual discharge of a dollar or account from 1810 to 1825, was two Sicca rupees; this being the description of specie and rate of payment introduced with the Indian invading force, and re-adopted both by Government and the public on the return to cash payments. Other coins, such as the Spanish dollar, and local dollar struck by the French Governor De Caen, were sometimes employed, but the rates of passing them appear to have depended on the market or usage from time to time; Sicca rupees, at two to the dollar of account, being the only fixed tender recognized in law and practice till December 1824, the date of the resumption of cash payments, when

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a full table of coins was published by the Local Government as the basis of that operation. This table, while re-adopting the standard of 2 Siccas to the dollar of account, or 100 cents, rated the Spanish dollar at 108 cents; this being believed to have been for some years its market value in the island as compared with 2 Siccas. The pure silver

in a Spanish dollar is, in general, 371 grains; in 2 Siccas it is 352 grains-a difference of 6 per cent. The seignorage of 2 per cent. on the issue of Siccas of course gave that additional value to those coins in India. Consequently, according to pure contents, the Spanish dollar would have been rated at 106 cents only, and if the Sicca had been allowed its seignorage, only 104 cents. The sovereign was rated at 5 dollars of account in the Table of 1824, but British money had never been practically in

use.

In 1825, the Home Government issued instruc- tions and passed an Order in Council to place the cur- rency of several of the colonies, including Mauritius,

on a new footing. The object was to bring sterling accounts and British money into use, partly for the sake of the convenience of paying the troops in this money, partly in order that it might become the standard of value in the colonies as at home; but as it was not to be expected that a currency composed exclusively of British money would meet the wants of the Colonial communities, it was directed that foreign and Colonial coins should circulate along with British money at fixed rates. The Order in Council valued the Spanish dollar at 4r. 4d., leaving

the several Local Governments to frame the rest of the table of rates, and convert currency accounts into sterling, upon the basis of that valuation. This it was supposed would give effect to the intentions of the Home Government without disturbing the prao- tical level of the standard in each colopy.

The Governor of Mauritius brought the scheme inte operation by a proclamation issued in the course of the same year (1825). Starting from the value of 108 gate of account assigned to the Spanish dollar in Dégember, 1824, be declared: the dollar of account equal to 44. British. The other coins likely to be good, such an Sicemand other ruquet, frazın, and