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THE INDIAN ANTIQUARY.
(AUGUST, 1897.
There was evidently a castom of the same description prevalent in Siam antil quite lately, for in Sir Henry Parkes' “Agreement " consequent on Sir John Bowring's Treaty of 1685 with Siam, we find in the “ Schedule of taxes on garden-ground, plantations, and other lands" the following Section : - "Sixty.cowries are levied per tical as expenses of testing the quality of the silver on all sums paid as taxes under the the long assessment. Taxes paid under the annual assessment are exempted from this charge." Again under " Customs Regulations" we find a Section : "The receiver of daties may take from the merchants two salungs per catty of eighty ticals for testing the money paid him as duties."
Horace Browne, in his Account of the District of Thayet myo, a high authority on all matters connected with Barma and its people, however, (p. 96), agrees with Symes as to the honesty of the old brokers, for he writes :- " Produce brokers were licensed. They were to take one per cent. on the value of the goods sold from the seller and the same from the bayer, and one half of the amount reai sed by them they had to pay in as Government revenue. This Gorern. mental supervision of brokers was an institation well suited to the requirements of the country, and its abandonment on the British side of the frontier is one of the points in which our administration contrasts unfavourably in the eyes of the people with that of the Native Government. Under the Native Government dishonesty or peculation on the part of a broker was almost unknown, and on the raro occasions when it did occor was easily detected and punished. Under the British Government ignorant people from the interior are frequently victinised by men who set themselves up as brokers on the river-bank."
It must be remembered, Irowever, that Burney got his information from personal experience and observation, whereas Symes spoke from slight experience and Browne perforce heard only the statements of persons, who were, as likely as not, laudatores temporis acti.
The ways of Chinese money-changers and brokers in similar circumstances are well illostrated by Huc,60 who has no hesitation in setting them all down as rogues. According to their castomer, they cheated in weight if they valued fairly, and they cheated in value if they weigbed fairly; or they weighed fairly and valued fairly, but cheated the country bumpkin in calculating. But Hac does not lay it to their charge that they doctored the silver, as we shall see below that the Burmese did, though he tells us a story to shew that this was at any rate sometimes done.
M. Rocher, a French Tongking official, writing in 1890,61 tells us much the same story of the Yünnan traders. He says that the silver tael is the currency of the country, but that the quality of the silver and the currency varies with each place. At "Mong-Tze" the tael weighs 0-037 grammes and is 3 per cent. higher in value than that of Yünnanfa, 10 per cent. better than that of Shanghai and about 1.45 less than that of Canton. Avd he then goes on to say that, “It is difficult to give a weight with mathematical exactness.62 Every dealer has two methods of weighing, according as he pays or receives. The difference between the two varies several points in the tael!"
Gouger, in his own inimitable manner, gives a graphic, and for the present discussion instructive, account of his first dealings at the Burmese Court, at p. 41 of his Prisoner in Burmah. The date must have been sometime in 1832 or 1823. After explaining how the various ladies about the Court had each taken from his bales what, she fancied, he writes :"So far everything went on agreeably, but now came the painful duty of telling each of the fair purchasers bow much she had to pay, and the still more difficult one of assessing the value of the gold and silver she presented for payment. The king's command, however, must
** Bowring'a Birm, Vol. II. PP. 245, 247.
e Nat. In. Library Ed., Vol. II. p. 114 ff. 31 Toung Pao, Vol. I. p. 51.
2 Dr. Vorderman, writing in 1890, on Chinese apothecaries' weights in Batavis, remarko, ter giving some valuable and remarkable instances, on the total want of uniformity in them, Towg Pao, VOL. I. p. 180.
