Ayotier feature in connection with the present crisis in the money market, is the noticeable fact that her gold, coined silver, or bank notes have had any effect whatever in redueing the pressure, The currency of China has come down to the one article of sycee, and notwithstanding the presence of a sufficient amount of bail ion in the port to reinstate the equilibrium, the possession of it has rather increased than diminished the demand. We have known of large amounts of Mexican dollars having been offered as security for loans; gold bars, of quality above suspicion, have been lawked about, and have failed to place the possessor in fands. Margins abundant have been of-fore—twenty-five to fifty per cont—but no sycee was to be obtained as a loan even on those terms. Money's worth there is abundantly in the port, bat. of money almost nil. The novelty -of the situation has been its chief pecnlarity. It has come on too suddenly to allow of the establishment of a system of barter, or the temporary substitution for sycee of other bullion, and what renders matters worse is the uncertainty as to how long it will last, Were the Yangchow mandarins open to reason, it might be possible to induce them to accept the security of gold or iron, with probable profit to the Exchequer, and certainly with advantage to the trade of the country, but mandarins have never shown' themselves equal to an emergency, and, though possibly acting without malice prepense, have too great a penchant for fingering money, and too utter a contempt for trade, to listen to any economic reasoning whatever. The official mind is moreoverproverbially slow, and nowhere slower than in China; and before the Yangchow mandarins would be suaded that they had caused a serious crisis, at a time when, above all others, it was advisable that trade should be unfettered, in order to throw rice into Pechili' before the final closing of the Peiho, the crisis will have righted itself.' That it is the general opinion that some such process will take place at a short date, may be inferred not merely from the conversation of mercantile men both native and foreign, but from the fact that dollars ly high rate. In ordinary times, Mexican dollars go into the melting pot when the price falls to about Tls. 69 per hundred drain of money like the present might possibly consign them to it at about 70, yet their price remains about 74.3 to 74.5. The nominal price of gold bars remains much the same, but this is because the article can scarcely he said to be interchangerblo. The tendency. of the market is rather to place the Banks in fands by selling drafts on London, a proceeding which has thus raised the rate of exchange to a limit unusual at this period of the and as there seems a probability the result being more favourable, the usi ly readily converted dollars and gold, have become almost a drag. The whole proceeding forms, however, a curious commentary on the results' of a want of proper currency. Were the Government of China trusted, it would either guarantee an issue of bank-notes or introduce its own coinage into cirenown backslidings have ren dered it long ago helpless in both par-tical are, Had the Hongkong Government persevered in its attempts to introduce a faithful coinage, a crisis like the present might have done much to bring its issues into public favour; both resources are, however, cut off, 80 that there seems a probability of a scarcity till the scarcity has had time to attract distant supplies. Meanwhile, the markets both for. imports and exports are practically stopped. No goods can' ie cleared. nor purchases effected while 'a ramous rate prevails for loans, The large imports of the past two years have affected the money
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.