CO129-367 - Acting Governor May - 1910 [6-7] — Page 514

512

great, and the ignorance of the Provincial Authorities of

the disastrous results of tampering with currency are too

profound,to justify the keeping open of this Mint.

4.

The next point I wish to emphasize

1s that so long as the existing largely over-issued silver

coinage of the Canton Mint, consisting of ten and twenty

cent pieces (of which the 10 cent pieces are believed to

be below the authorised weight) remains at a discount,

none of the new subsidiary coinage should be put into

circulation. I gather from the fact that the necessity

of

first dealing with the existing small silver coinage is not

mentioned in the Regulations, that the Chinese Government

is ignorant of the elementary principle that if two coin-

-ages are in circulation side by side the baser will drive

the better out of the market.

The Chinese Government should

either wait till the existing silver coins issued by the

Canton Mint reach par, or they should hasten that event by

a scheme of redemption before any issue of the new Sub-

-sidiary coins is madej and I would ask that this fact be

urgently pressed upon the Wai Wu Pu.

5.

The point alluded to in the

preceding paragraph is also important when section XIV of

the