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. 214
THE INDIAN ANTIQUARY
[AUGUST, 1913
pp. 383-4. In 1835 the Company revised its currency legislation for the whole of its territories, which included the Straits Settlements, and made no exception in favour of the dollar-using colony when enforcing the establishment of the rupee as the standard coin, with pice as subsidiary circulation. The first concession which the Company made to the reynire. ments of the Straits currency was in 1847, when by Act No. VI, of that year it was provided that the Indian Regulations shall not apply to copper currency of the Settlements of Penang, Singapore and Malacca ... But this concession was withdrawn in 1855. The preamble of Act XVII of that year reads as follows:- Whereas the Company's rape is by Act XVII of 1835 a legal tender in the Settlements of Prince of Wales Island (Penang), Singapore and Malacca, but no copper coin except the balf-pice issued under Act XI of 1854 is now legal tender of fractions of a rupee in that Settlement... it was enacted as follows from the 1st Jaly 1855 A pie (cash) should be the legal
tender in the Straits as 420 to the dollar A balf-pice
280 A pioe73
140 A double pice
70 p. 383. (In 1868) Sir Hercules Robinson exposed the absurdities of the existing regalations :-All accounts throughout the Straits Settlements, except those of the Government, are kept in dollars and cents, but the smaller accounts are kept in the denomination of rapeed, andas and pies, causing thereby much needless labour and confusion in the financial department.
p. 386. (On the transfer of the Colony from the Indian to the Imperial Government in 1867), the new local Legislation ... under date 1st April 1867 passed the Lega Tender Act of 1867, repealing all laws for making Indian coin legal tender, and declaring that from låt April "the dollar... shall be the only legal tender in payment or on account of any engagement whatever, except as hereinafter mentioned (i. c., as to subsidiary silver coins)... The Act goes on to place limits, of tender of ... such copper or bronze coins as may be issued by Her Majesty's Mint or any branch thereof, representing the cent or one hundredth part, the half-cent or two hundredth part or the quarter-cent or four hundredth part of the dollar ... Footnote. The rate at which the conversion of the old into the now currenoy was to be effected was 220 rupees per 100 dollars.
VIII. Histoire de la navigation aux Indes Orientales par les Hollandois.
Par G. M. A. W. L. [Lodewijcksz Willen].
Amsterdam, 1609,74 [Translated.] [Book I. relates to the First Datch Voyage, 1595-7] fol. 306. The Chinese live only at Bantam ... Those who live at Bantam are those who buy pepper of the villagers ..
storing it until the Chinese ships arrive, when they sell it at two sacks for a catti, that. is, 100,000 casas [ensb], for which they have bought eight sacks or more. Eight or ten of these ships come every year in January. ... They bring the coin which has currency over all the Island of Java and the neighbouring Islands; it is called cas in the Malay language and pitio in Java. It is less than a denier,75 and of very bad alloy, being cast in a mould. It is of lead mixed with the copper dro88,70 and therefore so fragile that when a string
13 Batio of tinto silver #: 1.
14 These atracts contain the first report of the currency in the Malay Archipelago made to the Dutoh. The French in whioh the wooount is written in quaint and diffioult,
At that time 840 denier wont to the lur (quarter dollar)960 to the dollar, The text he "de plomb moslé d'onomo de ouivre" [? sino).
