Apovr sixty, years ago a student of Chinese history in Soochow made some deep researches into the question of the currency. 'I'he currency was then becoming more and more out of the reach of government control, Foreign trade was increasing. The government had for nearly two centuries left silver to work its own way as money paid by weight, and received it im payment of taxes from each arrondissement. Only the copper cash were issued by the goverment. For silver there was no iit and never had been but once, and that for a short time, yet this metal had grown to be one of the most important elements in domestic as well as foreign trade. It was the same with paper. Paper notes representing money were issued by private capitalists in all large cities, and the government had no interest in then. Their success as a circulating representative of silver was euritely at the risk of the native bank. Silver and paper both represented money in all the large transactions of trade, The small market. negotiations in copper cash which belong to the daily lite of the people, and which, while as transactions they are counted by millions, are always small in bulk, were the only trading operations of which the government issued the circulating medium. How strikingly different was this state of things from that which exists in the West, where gold, silver, copper, nickel, and stamped paper are all issued by the governments as money. Our author Knew nothing of this, of course, but he was still able to cast his eye over-a wide range of financial facts. China had hada doug history of financial experiments and a succession of prosperous and disappointing experiences, With the
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