Sth Sept.
''uz copper cash of China can be traced back to about eight centuries before Christ. Ever since that time this has been the favourite currency. The art of casting metal appears to have been of foreign origin in China in those! ently times. After an age of copper cash and cheap gold, silver entered China with foreign trade. First the Arabs brought it to Canton but in no large quantity. Paper money was employed for long period and as Colonel Yule in his Bfarco Polo has shown, a tael or ounce of silver was in the 18th century worth 1,000 cash.
In 1777, Amyot* or some other French Missionary tells us, a tael of silver was exchanged for a thousand or eight hundred cash, Silver from America came to. China in the way of trade in the 16th and subsequent centuries, A tael of silver now} changes for 1,260 cash, About 1850} Williams tells us the price was! 1,680 or 1,700 cash, Again, Doolittle says that in 1850 a dollar was at Foochow worth 1,400 cash, and in 1854 it yielded 1,750 cash and in 1869 it was changed for 1,050 cash, hus it appears that in a few years' time silver inay nearly double its value. It has no local stability. When silver is high, trade prospers, Ihe merchant buys a larger quantity of goods for his money and sells. them to his own ad-! vantage. He is induced to do a larger business and others follow his example, Silver is not in these conditions a good local standard of value, It is liable to fall nud cause depression. he real standard of value in China is cop) per which las been long in the country and is used in the pay-! ment of wages, in the purchase of articles of food, and in all those! trades which do not require the auer= chant to travel to a distance from his home. 'The stability of copper cash values ig accounted for by the fact that the goods it is employed to represent commercially remain just what they were year by year. Rice and wheat are brought to market every season after' the employment of the same amount of agricultural skill and muscular activity oit the part of the farmer. Copper cash are the real standard of value for farm produce.. It is therefore the duty of the government to keep the country well supplied with this sort of money. When, not many years ago, copper was not forthcoming from Yunnan the mints ceased to make cash. 'I'he growth of trade where this takes place soon brings about a stringency in all lange markets; this was the case during the Taiping rebellion. The scarcity of cash was in!
Mémoires concern ant les Chinois. Tom.
Social Life of the Chinese. Vol. 25 p. 140. of the cash foundries has quieted the agitation which was witnessed.
As ove of the results of foreign trade the accounts of the country have been kept since the Ming dynasty in silver instead of in copper. Thus in the Red Book the salary of all officers is stated in silver. The Shanghai Magistrate has 1,500 taels a year. Formerly salaries were stated in grain. Even in Peking at present when the bannerman receive monthly pay, a part is silver! and a part is rice. But silver is more official than popular, The commercial currency is in part silver and in part copper cash, Some trades keep accounts in silver and others in copper cash. Whose trades which keep accounts in silver are liable to the vicissitudes of rising and falling value in their standard, 'They then fall back on cash as the ultimate standard, 'The traders in Shanghai who keep accounts in silver are the druggists, the silk and tea merchants, the dealers copper and bronze, in oil, in timber, 0 jade ornaments, and in sugar.' traders that keep accounts in dollars and cash are the booksellers, the opium dealers, and traders in live stock. Ar-the demand for silver fixes its: value. Gold holds its place in England and this gives it stability. Copper holds its place in China and may be viewed as possessing a stability like that of gold. Silver is prevented by legislation from obtaining local stability like these two metals, It therefore fails to acquire a fixed value because no country since 1875 has been willing to give ita permanent home. In China, copper money is the currency of the people and dollars have come to be accepted as convenient addition to the cash currency through a large partof the country. The 'l'reasurers of the provinces are coining new dollars in large quantities. What is needed is stability in the exchange to facilitate their use, This is a most important point in the forecasting of the future of silver.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.