[ { "id": 261267, "series_id": 27, "series_slug": "histsyn-co129-engine", "series_title": "CO129 Colonial Office Hong Kong Records 理藩院香港檔案", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "CO129-103 - Others - 1864", "page_number": 494, "title": "CO129-103 - Others - 1864", "content_text": "## LAND TELEGRAPH TO HONG-KONG AND THE CHINESE PORTS\n\nIt is part of Captain Sprye's plan to unite Rangoon and Hong-Kong by a line of overland wires: thus enabling news from Europe to reach Hong-Kong before the mail steamer has finished coaling in Ceylon, and three weeks before she brings her mail to the most southerly of the Chinese ports. Of the practicability of this project, there seems to be no question among persons on the spot. The Rangoon papers write in its favour, and the general body of mercantile men in the East regard it as perfectly feasible and most desirable.\n\nOur English Government at first looked unfavourably on the proposition, and long snubbed it officially as an impracticable project. The treaty with Burmah has, however, removed what was, in truth, the only serious difficulty in the way. We believe that if adequately pressed by mercantile bodies, like our Chambers of Commerce, the Government will be driven to take steps to remove any other difficulties, except those which should be left to private enterprise. The Manchester Chamber of Commerce has recently presented a second memorial on the subject, and Leeds has before now made representations in favour of thus opening up the West of China. Let not its energy flag.\n\n## ESMOK, ON THE SOUTH-WEST OF CHINA\n\n(Rangoon Gazette, 19th May, 1863.)\n\nOne of the chief difficulties which has beset Captain Sprye in his energetic attempts to bring about direct commercial communication between British Burmah and Western China is the supreme ignorance of objectors. Sometimes the provinces of China bordering on Burmah are described as being unfruitful and sterile, and the population scanty; sometimes all but impassable mountains are said to block up the way; and, among other ingenious guesses, to assist in bringing disfavour upon the project, is that started, we believe, by the `Friend of India`, viz., that \"Esmok is a myth.\" But there is now some chance of justice being done to the projector of this direct route. Mr. Bixby, of the Toungoo missionary establishment, is prosecuting inquiries regarding the South-Eastern Shan States, and South-Western China; and the result is that such information as he has collected inclines him to think favourably of Captain Sprye's proposition. The province of Yunan has been described to him as populous and productive, and Samoke, or Esmoke (Esmok), as a large and wealthy city, inhabited chiefly by Chinese, but partly by Shans and other races.\n\nIn our extract columns, we give Mr. Bixby's letter in full from the `Rangoon Times`. It will, doubtless, attract the attention of Captain Sprye, who is at this present time engaged in circulating among mercantile men at home the information which led to his conception of the practicability of an overland trade way from Rangoon to China. Mr. Bixby's inquiries, so far as they have yet been prosecuted, are all in favour of Captain Sprye, and all against the crude surmises of the half-informed, or else utterly ignorant people, who set themselves up for critics of his project.\n\n### FROM M. H. B., Toungoo, 4th May, 1863\n\n\"I noticed in your paper, a short time since, that the existence of such a city as Esmok, on the Chinese frontier, is questioned; that it was called 'a myth, &c., &c.\n\n\"I have taken some pains to ascertain the truth about it, but until to-day had been unable to get any reliable information from the Shans. This morning, I found a Shan, who came from Mung-la, opposite Esmok according to Yule's map, and, without giving him any names, required him to give me an outline map of the country, with the names of all the principal places. Among the number of these, I find Seing-sa-moke, which is, beyond question, Esmok. It is a Shan word. Seing means a Buddhist temple, or zayat, and sa-moke is descriptive of the land upon which it stands. The city is called, therefore, quite naturally, Sa-moke; and Esmok and Samoke are quite as similar as Dow-way and Tavoy, Mau-lamyeing and Maumain, Pyeemnico and Prome, Sittoung and Sitting, and many other Burman names anglicised.\n\n\"Sa-moke is said to be a large city, inhabited principally by Chinese, but with a large admixture of Shans, and other races. The country around must be very populous and wealthy.\n\n\"Judging from the accounts given me by natives, Yunan must be a remarkable country, both as it regards the people and the natural productions. More complete and reliable information will be forthcoming. Such data as I have lead me to think favourably of Captain Sprye's project.\"\n\n## LAND TELEGRAPH TO HONG-KONG AND THE CHINESE PORTS\n\n(Glasgow Herald, 14th July, 1863.)\n\nA Committee of the House of Commons, taken aback by answers made to them by Brinsley, the hydraulic engineer, in regard to a project under consideration, asked him abruptly what he thought Providence intended rivers for? What do I think Providence intended rivers for?\" repeated Brinsley, \"why, to feed navigable canals, of course!\" If Brinsley was entitled to the joke for the sake of the good philosophy in it—though the Chinese, whose commerce depends so much on their canals, would probably think that his raison d'être for rivers was quite sufficient—much more might our utilitarian merchants be pardoned if they thought that God had created electricity with a special eye to the electric telegraph. In this mode of application, it has subserved our highest worldly interests to an extent which could never have been anticipated.\n\n| Route | Distance (geographical miles) |\n| -------------------- | ------------------------------ |\n| London to Belgrade | 900 |\n| Belgrade to Constantinople | 450 |\n| Constantinople to Bussorah | 1100 |\n| Bussorah to Kurrachee | 1050 |\n| Karrachee to Calcutta | 1155 |\n| Calcutta to Dacca | 135 |\n| Dacca to Rangoon | 480 |\n| Rangoon to Shooe-Gyen | 130 |\n\nThere are few of our merchants, if they look at their maps and follow the route we have described, who will not feel their mouths watering, in a figurative sense, when they find the telegraph so terminating in Pegu. Their eyes will traverse, with eager and wistful glance, the narrow overland space that separates Shooe-Gyen from that mighty gateway of our commerce with China—Hong-Kong; and they will naturally ask themselves why the Home and Indian Governments, having wisely and successfully carried the wires so far, should not carry them the little farther that is thus needed to bring Hong-Kong into direct telegraphic communication with London? The distance, compared with that which will soon be traversed by the telegraph to India, is insignificant, and 120 miles of it would be over British territory. We should then, according to the detailed statement of the Messrs. Sprye hereon, have 279 miles from the north-east frontier of British Pegu, across Burmah, by the cities of Kiang-Tang and Kiang-Hung, to Sz-mau (Esmok) on the south-west frontier of China. Thence along the imperial roads, down the Pearl and West River valleys, through six or seven of the principal Southern Chinese cities, to Canton, would be 757 miles; with 70 more from that city to Hong-Kong. These distances yield a total of only 1,226 geographical miles, or, by adding one-fourth, as before, for deviations, 1,534.\n\nBeing then on the eve of completing an unbroken line of telegraphic communication from London as far as Eastern Pegu, a distance of 6,750 geographical, or about 7,100 English, miles, it becomes a question of great and pressing importance, especially to our merchants and shipowners, in view of the vast interests which we now have springing up in China, whether the Home and Indian Governments should not take the steps necessary for carrying the wires over the 1,500 miles of land that separate us from Hong-Kong. The project is not new. For several years, the Messrs. Sprye, whose names are well known in connection with our commercial system in the East, have been pressing on both Governments the importance of thus extending the Indian wires, by land, from Pegu to Hong-Kong and the open ports of China; and have spared no pains in endeavouring to satisfy them and the public as to the practicability of the proposal.\n\n## THE COMMERCIAL TREATY WITH BURMAH\n\n(Manchester Guardian, 21st July, 1863.)\n\nIn the `Guardian` of the 18th ultimo, we published the text of the treaty concluded with the King of Burmah on the 10th of November. We will here notice those provisions of it which seem to us to possess most interest to home manufacturers, merchants, and shipowners.\n\nArticle 4 of the treaty, referring to goods imported into Rangoon from any British or foreign territory, for export to the Burmese territory, stipulates that—\"If such goods are declared for export to other territories, and not for sale in the Burmese territory, the Burmese ruler shall, if he believes the manifest to be true, not cause bulk to be broken, and such goods shall be free of duty.\"\n\nNow, the western provinces of China comprise the only \"other territories\" beyond Burmah that can be commercially approached from Rangoon.\n\nAnother most valuable provision in the treaty, in reference to the opening of direct trade between Eastern Pegu and China across Burmah, is that part of article 7 which provides that:—\"British merchants shall be allowed to settle and to have lands...", "txt_file_path": "txt/2diw2n4r2/CO129-103 - Others - 1864.txt", "external_url": "", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 305457, "series_id": 27, "series_slug": "histsyn-co129-engine", "series_title": "CO129 Colonial Office Hong Kong Records 理藩院香港檔案", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "CO129-187 - Governor Hennessy - 1880 [1-4]", "page_number": 198, "title": "CO129-187 - Governor Hennessy - 1880 [1-4]", "content_text": "# 2106 February, 1880.\n\n## Loverna M. John The Fennety, C. M.G.\n\n**Transmitting a Public Statement of the Governor on the so-called Slavery and domestic Servitude question.**\n\nInclosure in Governor Pope Hennessy's Despatch 1:24. 15th February 1880\n\n## CHINESE DEPUTATION TO THE GOVERNOR.\n\nOn February the 19th, His Excellency Governor HENNESSY received a deputation of Chinese merchants at Government House. The following were present:\n\nFung Tang, of the I-chéung-ching firm, Charterers of Australian vessels; Li U-ts'éung, of the Ts'éung-un firm; Hu Ming-kwong, residing at the Tsun-ch'éung-t'ai bong; Tsui Hin-yau, of the Mán-ts'ün Opium firm; Fung Yuk-shu, of the Fuk-lung firm; Hu Man-chi, of the I-tai Nám-pák-hong firm; Kwok Iú-ts'éung, of the Ut-wo Opium firm; Li Sze-ch'iú, of the Tsun-ch'éung-t'ai Cotton goods firm; Chiú Shing-lain, of the Kwong Mau-t'ai Nám-pák-hong firm; Wong Yat-ping, of the Kwong-ki Nám-pák-hong firm; Chan King-sing, of the Man wo-fung Company; Ngán Trung-in, of the Mán-wo-fung Company; Ch'éuk Wai-yuk, of the Fuk-ki Piece goods firm; Ling Tin-ts'oi, of the Mán-in firm; Fung In-ting, of the Ko-lung-t'ai Piece goods firm; Wong Chiú-yung, of the Mán-wo-fung Company; Wong To, Editor of the (Chinese) Circulating Herald; Fung Po-hi (Ming-shán), Comprador of the Chartered Mercantile Bank; Ng Tsze-ying, Comprador of Messrs. Douglas Lapraik & Co.; Luk Kwai-iú, of the Sui-lung Piece goods firm; Kwok Ts'ung (Kwok A-cheung), of the Fát-hing firm; Tsé l'ò-t'ai, of the Ich cung Nampak hong firm; Ng Kai-kwong, of the Fuk-lung firm; Ch'an Chiú-tsféung, of the Lai-ün firm; Wong Kwan-t'ong, of the K'in-fung Nam-pák-hong firm.\n\nMr. FUNG MING-SHAN said this deputation of Chinese merchants came before His Excellency to present an address on behalf of the community. If His Excellency would allow him, he would first read the address in Chinese and afterwards request Dr. ETTEL to read the translation. He then read the address as follows, of which the translation was afterwards read by Dr. EITEL, Chinese Secretary to the Governor:\n\n\"**Address of thanks to His Excellency John Pope Hennessy, C.M.G., Governor and Commander-in-Chief of Hongkong.**\n\n\"Ever since His Excellency Governor HENNESSY assumed office on his arrival here, he has been the Protector of our whole community of Hongkong. In the fervent hope that happiness in abundance will ever fill his mind and tranquility never fail to surround him, we, the whole Chinese community of Hongkong, are moved with delight unspeakable. For we bear in mind that ever since His Excellency the Governor entered upon his appointment, he relaxed, on every audience granted to us on public business...\n\n## 香港督憲\n\n本月十九日，督憲燕大人接見本港華商代港衆拜謁者有：怡昌正金行馮登祥、俊昌泰行內李汝祥、許明光於萬全店、崔影由於福隆店、馮玉靄、卓緱玉於萬源店、凌殿材於高隆泰疋頭店、馮衍庭於萬和豐公司、黄招容於環日書怡泰南北行、許文治於悅和店、郭祥於俊昌泰花紗店、李士昭於廣茂泰南北行、招成林於廣記南北行、黄日屏於萬和豐公司、陳景星及顏宗賢於福記正頭店、桂瑤於發興行、郭松於怡昌南北行、謝保泰於福隆店、吳啟光於麗源店、陳兆祥於豐報主筆、王韜於有利銀行買辦馮熙德、忌利士買辦吳子、莫瑞隆匹頭店陸貴發。\n\n馮明瑠安倡言曰：恭謝燕制軍頌詞。本港華商親詣督憲塔前，爲代港衆拜謁。詞誦香港總督漢語畢，馮明瑠安將頌詞先誦華文，後請歐參贊譯誦英文。\n\n**敬獻頌詞懇求容蟻**\n督憲大人節鉞來臨，橅我港衆。伏維承膺多祐，恒集綏安。闔港華商不勝雀躍。溯自制軍督憲來港以來，凡遇我等因公謁見，參贊歡隨，將頌詞無不略分情殷勤。殛接仰窺督憲...", "txt_file_path": "txt/2diw2n4r2/CO129-187 - Governor Hennessy - 1880 [1-4].txt", "external_url": "", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 311369, "series_id": 27, "series_slug": "histsyn-co129-engine", "series_title": "CO129 Colonial Office Hong Kong Records 理藩院香港檔案", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "CO129-197 - Governor Hennessy - 1882 [1-2]", "page_number": 390, "title": "CO129-197 - Governor Hennessy - 1882 [1-2]", "content_text": "## REOP 389\n\nC.O. 5466 \n**RES 20 MAR 32** \n\nCopy Minute by His Excellency the Governor \n\nAct accordingly! \nAdvertised in Government Gazette and in the Circulating Herald.\n\nThe Colonial Surgeon is to draft such advertisement as he thinks best, and Dr. Girl will translate it for publication.\n\n(Signed) J. Pope Hennessy \n19th November 1881.\n\nPage 390 \nPage 391", "txt_file_path": "txt/2diw2n4r2/CO129-197 - Governor Hennessy - 1882 [1-2].txt", "external_url": "", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 311370, "series_id": 27, "series_slug": "histsyn-co129-engine", "series_title": "CO129 Colonial Office Hong Kong Records 理藩院香港檔案", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "CO129-197 - Governor Hennessy - 1882 [1-2]", "page_number": 391, "title": "CO129-197 - Governor Hennessy - 1882 [1-2]", "content_text": "## CO. 5466\nRECO 390\n**REG: 20 MAR 32.**\nCopy Minute by the Colonial Surgeon.\nDraft of notification Simulating the Fazette and the Circulating Herald as directed.\n(Signed) Th. C. Ayre. 18th November 1881.", "txt_file_path": "txt/2diw2n4r2/CO129-197 - Governor Hennessy - 1882 [1-2].txt", "external_url": "", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 355903, "series_id": 27, "series_slug": "histsyn-co129-engine", "series_title": "CO129 Colonial Office Hong Kong Records 理藩院香港檔案", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "CO129-265 - Public Offices & Others - 1894", "page_number": 180, "title": "CO129-265 - Public Offices & Others - 1894", "content_text": "# shall convince their silver-loving constituents at home that its coin their silver at the mints of Mexico and pay its Government advocates are at heart the friends of silver, which shall couple 4.40 per cent, or they must pay the Government 2 per cent duty with seigniorage that grotesque suggestion of the President in for exporting it. his veto message, that if the Congress of the United States would let the Government borrow what money it wanted on its Interest-bearing bonds, then the country could afford a further issue of silver money which requires no redemption, except silver itself.\n\nThe Republic of Mexico produces some $50,000,000 annually in silver. Of this amount, some $5,000,000 or more are exported in bullion in small amounts to meet the local demands of trade and commerce. Some $20,000,000 of the product of Mexico goes in matte to the great refineries of Swansea, in England, and is there coined.\n\nSuch a suggestion, Mr. President, is too petty to be fairly considered. If we are to have bonds, let us meet a bond issue like men. I for one need no sop thrown to me of a seigniorage bill in consideration that I shall give the Secretary of the Treasury my vote to issue unlimited bonds to meet unknown and uncertain deficits. We will cross that stream when we reach it. It is within my memory, Mr. President, when no dollar of silver was ever produced in this country to any commercial extent. Since that time, in the last twenty years, we have built our refineries, built our smelting works, we have adopted different processes, and we now smelt our silver into bullion, but $20,000,000 of the product of Mexico still goes to England in the form of matte.\n\nThis resolution, then, is not introduced because it has any relation whatever with the future of the silver question in the United States. It has no sort of connection with the great principle of bimetallism.\n\nChina, like all other nations doing business on a silver basis, and owing no debts the principal and interest of which are payable in gold, is in a most prosperous and happy condition, with a rapidly increasing commerce and largely increasing exports. There has not been a period in the history of that nation when its internal affairs and its foreign commerce were in as good a condition as now. That condition has been largely facilitated by the attitude of Great Britain toward India, to which I shall hereafter refer, but it is a fact that the trade of China, internal and with the outer world, was never as prosperous as now.\n\nThat country, with its population of upwards of 400,000,000, is dominated by precedent; its methods of agriculture, of manufacture, and of transportation have remained unchanged through all the centuries. When she first opened her ports unwillingly to foreign nations, the Mexican dollar was adopted as the standard of value and its adoption has remained unchanged. Almost every other nation of the world has endeavored to introduce its dollars in competition with the Mexican dollar, and has failed. The English Government for a time, at Hongkong, started the coinage of a British dollar, and coined some 10,000,000 of them. Some of them were used in circulation, some of them as buttons, as bangles, and as ornaments; but they made no general impression upon the country, and their coinage was withdrawn.\n\nThe French nation commenced the coinage of a dollar with which to transact its commercial business with China, but it was compelled to withdraw it.\n\nThe Japanese Government now coins its yen, with not quite so much silver in it as had the Mexican dollar. It has also something of a circulation, but an extremely limited circulation in China.\n\nOur trade dollar, of which we issued some $35,000,000, never became general in use throughout the Chinese Empire.\n\nThe Senator from Ohio [Mr. SHERMAN] inadvertently made a suggestion the other day which is not in accordance with the fact, that the Chinese Government stamped the \"yen\" upon the coin, and it then became currency. The \"yen\" is the name of the Japanese coin. It was the custom at the time our trade dollar was introduced in China for each business house receiving a dollar to stamp its \"chop\" or business mark or device upon the dollar, and then it would circulate to the next business house, which, in turn, would stamp its \"chop\" or mark upon it.\n\nAfter circulating a few times, it would become defaced, disfigured, and light in weight, when it would be rejected by the banks, and after its rejection by the banks, it would be coined into bullion. The bullion afterwards found its way into India or was hoarded, as was the custom in those years, as among the assets of the retiring Chinese merchants who were in the habit of running their silver into bullion and preserving it as part of their treasure or assets or fortune, but in all those attempts, nothing has taken the place of the Mexican dollar. The Mexican Government started to change the emblem on its dollar, but that change was unacceptable to the Chinese Government, and the old Mexican dollar still stands as the standard of circulation in that country.\n\nDisraeli has said that every precedent embalms a principle; and it may be, Mr. President, that back of this precedent, which seems to us meaningless, the fact that while other countries coined a dollar for foreign circulation only, the Mexican Government has issued to China, no dollar which it repudiates at home, may have had much to do with the fact that the Mexican dollar has remained the standard. This Mexican dollar is a dollar of 377 grains fine, known as the dollar marked with the cactus, the eagle, and snake.\n\nTo meet this universal demand, the Mexican mints are more than overcrowded. The Mexican Government charges a seigniorage of 4.40 per cent on every dollar which it coins. It charges an export duty of 2 per cent on all silver exported from the country. So that those producing silver in Mexico must either\n\n| Capacity of Mexican Mints | Amount Coined | Destination |\n| --- | --- | --- |\n| 25-26 million dollars | $1,000,000 stays in Mexico | Mostly exported to Japan, India, and other parts of Asia |\n| | | About $7,500,000 goes by way of San Francisco |\n| | | A little less amount goes by way of England, from Liverpool and London, direct to Asia |\n\nThe capacity of the Mexican mints is but twenty-five to twenty-six million dollars. Of this amount, $1,000,000 stays in the Republic of Mexico; all the rest of it is exported. The exportation is almost entirely to Japan, India, and other parts of Asia. Of this export, about $7,500,000 on an average for the last ten years goes by way of San Francisco, a little less amount goes by way of England, from Liverpool and London, direct to Asia, and the rest of it probably goes abroad in the pockets of returning Chinamen or through Chilean or Peruvian ports. Of the amount that is coined, there is already, owing to this demand, not only a scarcity of Mexican dollars, but a scarcity of silver in Mexico for coinage purposes. I saw in one of yesterday's newspapers, the New York Tribune, I believe it was, a telegram from Boston saying: \"A dispatch to the Herald from the City of Mexico says: 'Silver bars refined in the United States from Mexican ore are arriving here for coinage into dollars. Eighty-eight bars have been received, and more are expected. German bullion dealers are talking of sending bar silver here for the same purpose, owing to the increasing demand for Mexican dollars in China, where a scanty supply has hindered trade operations.'\"\n\nThe fact that the supply is insufficient is shown not only by the importation of silver into Mexico for the purpose of being coined, but it is also shown by the fact that certain quantities, not large, of bullion are exported to China.\n\nWe hear much of Chinese mints. There is a mint at Shanghai known as the Royal Chinese Mint. Its business, its surroundings are all shrouded in the greatest mystery. It is in the hands of local mandarins under some contract with the Government. Our consul made a report upon it last year. The only information he could obtain was that there were coined in the mint about 3,000,000 ounces of silver, and out of that amount, there were 10,000,000 ten-cent pieces, which were utilized principally by the natives as buttons. The coinage of the Chinese mint, however, amounts practically to nothing.\n\nChina produces no silver. This bullion goes to China because there are not Mexican dollars enough to do the business, and it is from the fact that Mexican dollars in London and in New York bring a premium from a half per cent to 3 per cent; that the demand is for the Mexican dollar, and the supply is insufficient. The effect of the enlargement of the facilities of Mexico in the coinage of its dollars must be to enlarge our commerce as well as to facilitate the world's commerce with China.\n\nMr. HIGGINS. Will the Senator answer a question at that point?\n\nMr. WOLCOTT. With pleasure.\n\nMr. HIGGINS. I ask if the premium on Mexican dollars is not owing to the Chinese demand?\n\nMr. WOLCOTT. It is owing to the Chinese demand—not the Indian, but the Asiatic demand for dollars.\n\nMr. HIGGINS. They are not to be used in this country?\n\nMr. WOLCOTT. They are wholly for shipment to Asia. Our commerce with China is already great. Our exports to China last year were $3,900,000; our imports were upwards of $20,000,000; of which sum $5,000,000 were dutiable and some $15,000,000 were free.\n\nIf these dollars shall be coined at our mints at Carson City and at San Francisco, it will create something of an active silver market on the Pacific coast, and where the dollars are, the facilities for shipment and commerce will go also. There will be a demand for these dollars from London merchants and from English and from Scotch merchants. They will lend gold to this country in exchange for the dollars which will be shipped direct, and it will add much to the steamship commerce between the Pacific coast and Asia. Many of these dollars will find their way into the Indian market. They are handy; they will up country be remelted and made into bangles and ornaments. There is always a certain demand in India also for Mexican dollars.\n\nThe total commerce of China has of late years assumed enormous importance. Her foreign commerce last year consisted of £27,000,000 of imports and £25,030,000 of exports. These exports are rapidly increasing in volume and in value and are very much facilitated, as I have said, by the action of England toward her colonies in India.\n\nThe attitude of Great Britain is most pregnant with interest in this country, for no matter what may be our legislation, the attitude of Great Britain toward India, the prices at which her wheat and jute and cotton are to be sold, the facilities of the exchange into English money, must ever materially affect the prices of those products in this country which we raise in competition with that great people.\n\nThe present policy which Great Britain is following towards India... She is animated naturally by her own selfish interest. The products of India and the products of China are much alike, and whatever we can do to upbuild the commerce of Asia at the expense of the commerce of India must be to our advantage as showing England where her interests lie.\n\nPage 180\nPage 181\n\nWe are met with the threat that England may sell her silver bullion on hand. It has been recently suggested by the English press that the 20 crores of bullion, or the 80,000,000 ounces of silver, which England has on hand in India may be sold. If that unfortunate occurrence should take place, there is no doubt that the price of silver would be further depreciated; there is no doubt that it would add to the already untold disasters which have overtaken the world because of the abandonment of silver; but I venture the prediction that England will never take that step, for when she does that, she makes valueless hundreds and thousands of millions of dollars of bonds, the principal and interest of which are payable in gold, which silver-using countries have borrowed of her. Let her sell her silver on hand in India and you will find every silver-using country on earth repudiate every gold payment it owes; and 90 per cent of those payments are due to Great Britain.\n\nThe Indian government collects its revenue in silver rupees; the revenue collected since last June and remaining in the treasury amounts to some 20 crores of rupees—in other words, to some 80,000,000 ounces of silver. There are some 4,000,000 ounces to the crore. The crore is an East Indian word signifying 10,000,000, and 10,000,000 rupees mean something over 4,000,000 ounces of silver. These 80,000,000 ounces of silver are now locked up in the English treasury in India, making a scarcity of actual rupees for commerce in India.\n\nNow, the demand for these rupees, through sales of so-called \"council drafts\" in London, is the demand of English importers of Indian wheat, cotton, and jute, who require silver rupees to pay for their purchases from Indian farmers. But the government of India, by closing the mints, has said: \"You can not any longer pay rupees by buying silver from America, or elsewhere and coining it in Bombay, therefore you must now buy these rupees from our government treasuries, and at whatever price we fix.\" True, the value of the silver in the rupee is now only 22 cents per rupee, but they will not sell their coins, their \"council drafts,\" for less than 28 cents per rupee; either take them at that price or leave and go out of business. This result has followed from this policy of coercion. China, for example, is getting silver—is getting Mexican dollars—for what she sells in Europe at their bullion value, but the Indian exporter is finding that the present artificially high price charged by the government of India for the rupee is giving the China exporter a great advantage he never got before.\n\nLet me illustrate this point carefully. In India, the government has fixed the value of the rupee at 28 cents, while the value of a corresponding weight of silver in China, say two-fifths of an ounce, is 23 cents. Now, if we suppose 1 pound of tea in India costs 1 rupee, then the Indian grower can sell some 17 pounds of tea for the gold sovereign. But the Chinaman can afford to sell 23 pounds of tea for the sovereign. As this argument applies to most of India's exports, the balance of trade since the closing of the mints has gone strongly against India, and is greatly favoring China; and just as the rise in the Indian rates of exchange and the fall in the China rates has thrown the balance of trade against India and is favoring China, so also the fall in the rate of exchange between the silver-using countries and Europe since 1873 has tended to destroy our favorable balance of trade with gold-using Europe, by stimulating the trade in wheat and cotton from Asia at the expense of our exports of these staples.\n\nThe question of the production of silver is not to be settled by by attempting to further degrade and dishonor it. Many of us have taken the position here on the floor of the Senate for years, that even if we rehabilitated silver and restored the old free coinage at the ratio of 16 to 1, the production of silver would not be increased. We have said that the rise in prices, the rise in wages, the limited and narrowing area for the discovery and development of silver mines, would prevent in any event the further and larger development and output of silver ores. Mr. President, there has lately been borne in upon us a different condition of facts.\n\nWe now face another proposition. Every one of these estimates has been based upon the assumption that silver alone depreciated. But one lesson that we are painfully and slowly, but surely, learning to-day, is that not only has the price of silver depreciated or the price of gold appreciated, but that wages are decreasing, that the cost of the necessaries of life is decreasing, that the food the miner eats and the clothes he wears are growing less in cost, that the cost of machinery for the development of mines is less, that the cost of making roads is less, that the traffic upon the railroads will bear less, and out of the misery of it all, there must come the inevitable fact that, as silver declines in value, so men with mouths to feed will be found to produce it for less wages.\n\nOur furnaces are cold, our fires are out, our mines are most of them closed; those which are kept open are kept open in order to prevent the timbers from rotting and the waters from flooding the mines; yet when these miners—intelligent men who have up to this time found work at prices which remunerated them and enabled them to add to the glory of American manhood, to educate their children, to feed them and to own their own homes—find that the monetary policy of this country prevents their receiving these wages, and that it is starvation or nothing—\n\nSo, following this, I desire to call the attention of the Senate briefly to an Indian opinion as to the effect which is being produced in India by the floundering policy of the English Government towards India. I read very briefly from some recent remarks by Hon. Robert Steel, who is the commercial member of the viceroy's council in India. In an address which he delivered at the meeting of the Bengal Chamber of Commerce, he says:\n\n\"We may now judge of the result of the closing of the mints. The secretary of state can not sell his council bills. The balance of trade has disappeared. Exchange is falling, and there seems to be no chance of the downward course being arrested until we reach the metallic value of the rupee. Money is at 6 per cent, and may go much higher, but the exchange banks, in view of the further expected fall in exchange, will not bring out one rupee more than the amount they absolutely require to pay for the bills they have bought. By the presence of dear money and the prospect of still dearer money, trade is paralyzed. The fact is that the action of government in closing the mints has caused silver to fall to a lower point than it otherwise would have done, and yet it appears that whether the mints are closed or open, there is no chance that council bills can be sold on the scale of our requirements until exchange reaches the bullion point.\n\n\"Our trade is paralyzed\" in the hope of relieving the embarrassments of government, and yet the departure from a sound currency system is making the position of government worse than it was before. The present course can not be persevered in long. We can not go on borrowing gold and piling up money in our treasuries here today of reckoning must come, and can not be far off. We in English statesmanship are already pressing the unanswerable charge that the Indian Government has entered into a gigantic speculation in silver. This is serious enough in itself, but when it appears that the speculation is certain to be a losing one, the clamor against it will be irresistible. What then must be done? We are, perhaps, on the eve of a crisis which may give a terrible shock to industry, to commerce, and to credit. We can not prosper without a sound currency acting automatically. Let us open our mints, and we shall again see a wave of prosperity flowing over the land like that which followed in gold-using countries the discoveries of gold in California and Australia fifty years ago.\"\n\nThis, Mr. President, is an intelligent Indian opinion of the ...\n\nMr. SHERMAN. Mr. President, I do not intend to participate in any debate on this question, because I am inclined to think that the passage of the resolution and the undertaking by the President of the United States to negotiate some measure of relief to silver would be at this time a wise measure to pass. I certainly would favor any proposition which would tend to give silver a larger use for commercial or financial purposes. It would be a great benefit to the human race, it would be of vast...", "txt_file_path": "txt/2diw2n4r2/CO129-265 - Public Offices & Others - 1894.txt", "external_url": "", "rank": 0 } ]