CO129-363 - Public Offices & Others - 1909 — Page 418

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Letters to be adidistal to

THE CHIEF MANAGER"

FLEGRE SIC ADDRESS, PARADISE. LONDON

THE MERCANTILE BANK OF INDIA LIMITED

40. Threadwoodle Street:

Londans

6th Novr. 1908.

KN

The Hon. A. M. Thomson,

Colonial Treasurer,

Hong Kong.

Dear Mr.

Thomson,

By. to-day's mail the Chief Manager of the Mercantile Bank of India, Id. iswriting His Excellency the Governor on the

subject of Note Issue in your Colony. I think the letter deals

fully with the position as we find it.

At the interview I had at Mountain Lodge with the

Governor, the Colonial Secretary, and yourself, you raised the point

of our willingness to accept the right of issuing Notes against

depositing as security dollar for dollar in Coin. I replied that

I could not say what the attitude of the Directors of the Bank would

be towards such a suggestion, but that personally I felt that such a

distinction in treatment between the Hong Kong and Chartered Banks

and ourselves would not be fair. The privileges granted the Banks

named were in the case of the Hong Kong Bank by local ordinance, and

in the case of the Chartered Bank by its charter, limited and not

continuous. Such privileges were to expire by effluxion of time,

yet they have, notwithstanding any principle to the contrary laid down,

been quite lately renewed in each case separately by special legislation.

In the copies of the 1898 correspondence accompanying the letter to His Excellency you will see that at the time of that

correspondence we claimed the continuity of the Note Issue privilege

which the Chartered Mercantile Bank of India, London & China had enjoyed

this Bank registered under the Limited Liability Act, being in every way

a continuation, without interruption, of the old