THE  CURRENCY

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quality  of  the  silver  which  he  will  take  from  his  pocket  to
make  minor  payments.  All  this  seems  axiomatic  to  people
at  home,  but  it  is  necessary  to  state  the  axiom  in  order  to
explain  why  foreign  coins  have  been  introduced  into  China.
In  the  north  and  in  Mid-China  these  coins  have  remained
the  housekeeping  currency  of  the  foreigner,  never  having  been
admitted  into  the  trade  of  the  Chinese,  and  the  foreigner  is
made  to  pay  for  his  luxury  of  a  coin  in  which  he  can  have
confidence.  The  same  weight  in  a  coin  (the  silver  dollar)
with  the  same  inscription  is  worth  at  Shanghai  from  3  per
cent,  to  5  per  cent,  more  than  at  Canton,  whether  the  value
is  expressed  in  gold,  in  silver  taels,  or  in  commodities  ;
but  at  Shanghai  the  coin  remains  as  it  came  from  the  mint,
and  at  Canton  it  is  chopped.  In  the  south  the  quickerwitted
  Cantonese  and  Fukienese  have  accepted  the  foreign
coin,  but  have  done  so  in  a  peculiarly  Chinese  manner.  A
coin  is  an  officially  guaranteed  weight  of  a  certain  metal  ;
the  Chinese  accept  that  for  what  it  is  worth,  but  the  first
banker  or  merchant  into  whose  hands  the  foreign  coin  comes
"  chops  "  it  with  an  impressed  ideogram  about  an  eighth  of
an  inch  square,  thereby  giving  the  tradesman  and  the  private
individual  his  certificate  of  bona  fides  of  the  guaranteeing
government.  This  is  repeated  by  each  succeeding  banker,
until  in  the  end  the  chopped  dollar  resembles  a  disc,  or
rather  a  cup,  of  hammered  silver  work.
Foreign  Dollars
The  first  dollar  to  be  introduced  was  the  Carolus  (Spanish)
dollar,  also  called  the  “  Pillar  "  dollar  from  its  design—the
Pillars  of  Hercules.  This  for  many  years  was  the  only
foreign  coin  accepted  by  the  Chinese  ;  and  a  curious  survival
of  its  former  vogue  is  seen  at  Wuhu,  on  the  Yangtze,  where
the  few  remaining  unchopped  specimens  of  the  eighteenth
und  early  nineteenth  century,  estimated  not  to  exceed  400,000
in  all,  form  a  favourite  medium  of  exchange  and  command
a  premium  generally  of  30  or  even  40  per  cent,  over  their
intrinsic  value.  For  fully  eighty  years  the  dollars  of
Charles  IV.  (a.d.  1788-1808)  have  commanded  a  premium  of