We have seen: lately in the Peking! Gazettes and other sources of information what a deep interest the condition of the cash has created among rulers and people. The cash has become debased and every one seems to suffer thereby, except the illicit coiners who flood the country with spurious metal currency. Trouble has recently been caused in England, not from the condition of the pence, half-pence, and farthings but from the Proclamation which prohibited the importation of foreign bronze coin. It appears that a lucrative trade has been carried on for years past in the import of these, and especially of Frenchten-centime pieces. The profit on this operation will be seen from the purchasing power of a sovereign, which will buy 240 pennies and 252 ten-centime pieces. Both are mere tokens, for the same sovereign will buy bronze enough to make 960 pennies and somewhere about 1,008 ten-centime pieces. The profit on the import of foreign bronze coin has therefore been about one shilling a pound sterling or 5 per cent. The Treasury reaps the advantage between the actual metallic value of pennies, less the cost of coinage, and their circulating value as tokens. This profit is not of any consequence to the nation, seeing that since 1880 only some £230,000 worth of copper coin has been coined at the mint, and it has been carefully pointed out by an ex-Secretary to the Treasury that if the country lost some of the profit on its copper coinage, on the other hand it was saved some of the expense of coining pence by the importation of French pieces. The latter have never been a legal tender and have never been taken at the Government Departments, but they have circulated in large numbers throughout the Kingdom. Those, however, who would chiefly suffer by their being thrown out of circulation are the poorer people. It is a matter of no consequence to the rich or well-to-do or even to persons of moderate incomes whether the few foreign copper coins they may have in their possession or have to deal with remain of the value they have hitherto passed at or even whether they go out of. circulation altogether. But it is a very different matter to the poor, and perhaps to a considerable number of the wage eamning class. Now, although the Proclamation did not in any way inter-fore with the circulation of the foreign bronze coin already in the country, it was at once understood to do so, One an stated in a letter to the Times that " the foreign ce] rOclamation is playing havoc Tath the poor" and another that he "had seldom seen the cee 3 irritated." Omnibus companies and shopkeepers began to refuse the foreign Tame the or and circulation of which is said to have almost come to an end in a few days. In this state of affairs the Government were advised to issue another Proclamation announcing that for the present foreign bronze coins would be accepted at the Government Departments, and if necessary to apply to Parliament for authority to do this. The Chancellor of the Exchequer promptly acted on this suggestion, and a few after it had been made he intimated in the House of Commons that after the 18th of April and up to the 31st of May the foreign coins would: be exchanged for cash or stamps at every post office, at the rate of 13 for a shilling, in quantities not less than a shilling's worth, This will no doubt allay the irritation of the holders of the coin. After the 31st of the current month none of these coins will be exchanged. It appears from a brief statement made by Mr. Goschen that the late Government had several times been urged to forbid the importa tion of foreign copper coin but had refused to do so, not wishing to tamper with the cwrency, which is a curious reason from the men who proposed to reduce the intrinsic value of the half-sovereign. Also, that fishermen had been large importers of the coins from ports in the north of France. The little and brief panic among the poor which the Proclamation caused has served to show again the extreme sensitiveness of ordinary people to anything which looks like tampering with the currency. Wood's half-pennies, and the proposal to aboli one pound notes in Scotland, which Swift in the one case and Sir Walter Scott, as Malachi Malagrowther, in the other defeated, are instances in the past. Mr. Childers' proposed debasement of the half-sovereign only encountered the same contemptuous treatment which Mr. Robert Lowe's antecedent proposal to "sweat" the sovereign had met with from the menied classes. In the present instance a misapprehension of the intention of the Government's Proclamation caused such a stir that, within a fortnight, the Chancellor of the Exchequer was obliged to take a further step in order to soothe the popular irritation, Thispromptactionstrongly contrasts with the pottering of the Chinese Officials over their cash difficulties. What has happened in England has, it has been pointed out, shown in a small way the action of the well-known Gresham's Law—the cheaper coin driving out to some extent the dearer. It is in China as it is everywhere, bad or indifferent cash or coins drive the good ones out of circulation, as has been the case in the past and will be in the future, all the Imperial Decrees to the contrary not withstanding,
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.