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this Chamber to request that he will specially bring the matter to the notice of the Right Honourable the Secretary of State for the Colonies, as not only is our trade with China seriously affected by the present deplorable condition of China's Currency but the local industries of this Colony and our daily trade and retail business in like manner suffer from an excess of depreciated subsidiary coins which it is impossible to exclude from the Colony.
In the opinion of the Committee of this Chamber the first step towards reform is to place the whole of the mints under Imperial control and to put an end as promptly as possible to the issuing of coins or bank notes by the Provincial Authorities.
These local Authorities, as a rule, would seem to be wholly ignorant of the first principles of Imperial finance for they apparently regard their mints chiefly as yet one more means of making money for themselves during their tenure of office, without any regard to the dislocation of trade and the evil effects generally which may result from flooding their districts with depreciated subsidiary silver and copper coinage.
This has been demonstrated in a very marked manner by the action of the Authorities in the Provinces of the Two Kwang during the past few years by their excessive coining, chiefly of silver 20 and 10 cent and Copper one cent pieces.
They further issued notes of $1.00 and $5.00 denomination. The former has from the first been "watered" as the notes, though bearing on the face the characters (一元) one dollar and an impression of the Kwang Tung dollar which is supposed to be 7 mace, two candareens, are stamped on the back as being redeemable in subsidiary coins which at the present market value means a discount of about 9%; at times this discount has been lower and higher. These notes are not accepted by the
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this Chamber to request that he will specially bring the matter to the notice of the Right Honourable the Secretary of State for the Colonies, as not only is our trade with China seriously affected by the present deplorable condition of China's Currency but the local industries of this Colony and our daily trade and retail business in like manner suffer from an excess of depre- olated subsidiary coins which it is impossible to exclude from the Colony.
In the opinion of the Committee of this Chamber the first step towards reform is to place the whole of the mints under Imperial control and to put an end as promptly as possible to the issuing of coins or bank notes by the Provincial Authorities.
These local Authorities, as a rule, would seem to be wholly ignorant of the first principles of Imperial finance for they apparently regard their mints chiefly as yet one more means of making money for themselves during their tenure of office, without any regard to the dislocation of trade and the evil effects generally which may result from flooding their districts with depreciated subsidiary silver and copper coinage.
This has been demonstrated in a very marked manner by the action of the Authorities in the Provinces of the Two Kwang during the past few years by their excessive coining, chiefly of silver 20 and 10 cent and Copper one cent pieces.
They further issued notes of $ 1.00 and $5.00 denomination. The former has from the first been "watered" as the notes, though bearing on the face the characters () one dollar and an impression of the Kwang Tung dollar which is supposed to be 7
mace,
two candareens, are stamped on the back as being re- deemable in subsidiary coins which at the present market value means a discount of about 99; at times this discount has been lower and higher. These notes are not accepted by the
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