It is proposed that this Colony shall forsake silver and shall adopt a gold standard hased on the English sovereign, ' For convenience of local handling, it is proposed that the sovereign shall be divided into ten parts, each to be called a Straits" dollar, and each of the value of an English florin, These "Straits Dollars". shall.be- token dollars—that is they, shall not be intrivsically worth the tenth part of a suvereig.", but shall circulate only because they are convenient tokens for the, tenth. part of a sovereign. IM that respect, they will be in the precise position of the. English florin.. "Subsidiary coinage beneath. that token dollar shall contivuc. as,.at-present to be cents of dollar. 'This proposal has been evolved by the Sub-Committee of the Singapore Chamber of Commerce that was appointed on the 24th August, to consider the currency of the Colony.' That Committee, as finally re-arranged, consists of Mr. Anderson, Mr. Stringer, Mr..-Murray, and Mr. Laspe. 'The. decision. to which the Committee has come, and which we publish xis above, was really made: neatly a month' ago, although various minor circumstances have prevented it from; being.as yet presented to the Chamber. The re-Port of this Sub-Committee has. indeed still to go before the whale Committee of the Singapore Chamber of Commerce, and, if it be approved by the whole Committee, it has further to be submitted to the whole Chamber before it.can go to the Government. "We believe, however, that the Singapore Chamber of Commerce will accept their Sub-Committee's report, which seems to us an eminently sagacious one.
The Committee recommend, in substance, that this Colony shall throw over, silver. There is nothing to hinder, the Colony doing so. The trading circumstances of the Colony have, perhaps, no, parallel in this world because Hongkong, that might otherwise be parallel, is taken out of that category "by the fact that most Hongkong trade is, based, on relations with one country,..and. that country China. The Straits 'Settlements. are bound up. with no one.country. Ve trade alike. with gold countries, with silver countries, and_with countries such as: the Netherlands, Indies, that ussd a. silver currency "based. on' gold... Further...we produce nothing. This sweeping statement is, when you consider it, not really qualified by the fact that we.turn.out ships, ud engines and castings, and many.other articles of engineering mechanism and the like. We manufacture these: in; the sense that we turn out. the: finished. article, but chiefly that, finished article is: turned... out from products which first we -have had. Purposes that. need be considered, th- towns of Sinzapore and Peniing are two great commercial ware-... houses, that carry on the business of buy. ing, selling, forwarding, packing, fitting,
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.