Domingo were ransacked for gold, the world had not at its command the appliances and knowledge now considered essential to successful mining in any department. In the absence, therefore, of any extended and reliable geological survey of Haiti, and in view also of the fact that modern knowledge and skill in mining have never been put into requisition on the island, it may be safely asserted that the possible results of that industry are still an open question.

Certain it is that mining interests have hitherto been wholly neglected in Haiti, and it is believed that there are no laws on the subject in that country. For some reason, her resources in this respect are kept in the background and seldom referred to. It appears to have been the Government policy not to encourage enterprises that might tend to prostrate or impair the agricultural spirit and industry of the people, which are and hitherto have always been regarded as the basis, the main stay, of the national support.

Chapter X.

FINANCES-CIRCULATING MEDIUM-COINAGE.

From the date of Haitian independence (1804) up to 1827, the only circulating medium was specie, of which the volume was from time to time augmented somewhat by the coinage in the country of silver and the baser metals under the administrations of Pétion and Boyer. The value of the pieces (12% cents, 25 cents, and 1 dollar, silver, and 1, 2, and 6 cents, copper) thus struck off was only about one-third that of the corresponding pieces of American and Spanish coin, and this circumstance led to enormous frauds at the expense of the Republic.

In 1827, the drain made upon the circulating medium for the purpose of meeting payment on the French debt was so great that Boyer caused to be issued the first Haitian paper currency. It consisted of notes on the national treasury, given out without promise of ultimate redemption in specie, without bearing interest, and it had a forced circulation on a parity with the silver coinage; and was made a legal tender in all business transactions throughout the Republic, which then covered the whole island. It was in the form of one, two, and ten gourdes (dollars), but counterfeiting of the latter became so common that they were speedily withdrawn from circulation, and there was a steady depreciation in the values of the others until the revolution of 1843, when they were found to have lost 33 per cent of their original value, so that it took four gourdes to make one Spanish or American dollar.

Thereafter, the revolutions which followed necessitated the continual issue of paper money, and thus caused it to decline in value; so that at the overthrow of Soulouque in 1859, it was worth but twenty gourdes to the American dollar, and at the fall of Geffrard in 1867, it required thirty gourdes to purchase the same dollar. At this latter date, it was estimated that the emissions had reached one hundred and twenty millions, but the gourde still had a value. While the so-called Salnave revolution raged, for nearly three years, up to the end of 1869, the revolutionists and the Government seemed to vie with each other in issuing and forcing the circulation of paper money, which had now taken on such a wretched form that counterfeiting became almost a regular business. It is hardly possible to give even an approximate idea of the amount issued from all these sources. At that time, Spanish and Colombian gold was about the only standard form of the circulating medium.

When Salnave fell, in December, 1869, the value of the paper floated by him almost reached the vanishing point. It took more than four thousand gourdes to purchase one dollar gold at Port au Prince.

One of the first acts of the successful revolutionists in 1870 was to substitute their paper for that of the fallen chieftain at the rate of 10 gourdes of the latter for 1 of the former. This measure increased the value of the currency, so that in 1872, it was practically retired at the rate of 300 gourdes to the gold dollar, a measure which cost the Government $2,154,266.04 in American silver; and up to this day, the country people, and even those in the markets of the cities, calculate their money transactions on this basis. Thus, if in the markets the price of an article be 50 cents, the market women will say it is cent cinquante (150 gourdes).

The currency was speedily replaced by American silver coins which were then fast coming into common every day use, and while American gold was imported, Spanish and Colombian gold

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by degrees almost entirely disappeared from the country. To-day, it would be very difficult even in Port au Prince to find an exchange for or otherwise reasonably dispose of the "doubloon," which, in Salnave's time, reigned almost supreme as the standard of value among the merchants.

From 1872 to 1880, American silver continued to be the only real circulating medium in Haiti. It had been up to that time estimated that $5,000,000 in circulation would suffice for the business purposes of the country-a sum which could hardly have been more than $6 per capita of the population. With an increase of the population, however, and a constant augumentation of the volume of business which had been stimulated by the prospect of a long period of peace and prosperity under the Salomon administration, came evidence of a lack of money, so that in the last named year, $1,000,000 in Mexican silver was imported and speedily put into circulation. Once introduced, Mexican coins continued to flow into the country.*

In 1884, the Government decided to issue $2,000,000 of paper money in bills of $1 and $2 each. It was to be It was to be guaranteed by three-fifths of the fixed export duty on coffee and to be redeemable at the rate of $600,000 per annum. In 1887, a law was voted whereby these bills were to be replaced by new ones, but it never went fully into effect.

Meantime, the evils growing out of depreciated silver circula

*For the past nine years (i. e., up to 1882) American silver has constituted the principal part of the circulating medium of Haiti. Within the past two years and a half, a large amount of Mexican silver dollars has been imported and this money has circulated freely in the country. Within the same period, an amount of Haitian coins bearing the effigies of Boyer and Pétion, variously estimated at from $50,000 to $100,000, has been remonetized and again put in circulation by the Government. If to these several elements of silver money there be added a small amount of American, English, French, and Spanish gold, the aggregate of the whole, both kinds of specie, amounting to almost $7,000,000, one will have, substantially the sum total and character of the currency which has been employed in this country (Haiti) for the period indicated. Vide report of the United States consul-general in the reports of United States consuls, No. 19, issued by the Department of State, May, 1882, p. 110.

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tion, from which the contiguous Republic of San Domingo is. still suffering, had induced the Government to issue silver of its own. It was coined in Paris, and is of the same commodity value as the five-franc French pieces and the smaller denominations of fifty cents, twenty cents, and ten cents.

These several arrangements, together with others, succeeded in causing both American and Mexican silver to practically disappear from circulation, and in the midst of this process, American gold coins were imported in considerable values, so that at the end of 1889, it was estimated that there were about $2,000,000 of that form of money in the country. It is used chiefly for paying export customs duties. It is generally believed that large sums of this form of money are practically retired from circulation to be held as savings in the hands, especially, of the thrifty country people; but it is still in the country and thrown back into circulation from time to time, according to need.

At the same time, it was estimated that the amount of silver, existing only in the form of Haitian coins, then in circulation was about $2,500,000.

These estimates gave to Haiti at the end of 1889 a gold and silver circulating medium of $4,500,000. At that period, there were in Government and bank notes then recognized as legal tender: Issued by the Salomon administration, $2,516,000; issued by the Revolution of the North, $2,500,000; issued by the National Bank, $12,625. Total of legal-tender paper money, $5,028,625. Adding to this the specie already enumerated, $4,500,000, it gives as Haiti's whole circulating medium December 31, 1889, $9,528,625. In addition to this, there were issued during the last weeks of the Légitime administration, in the summer of 1888, in bills of $5 each, $449,995; in bills of $1, 20 cents, and 10 cents each, $17,732; total, $517,727, about the negotiation of which there was then question. The $5 notes have since been recognized at a discount, but they are not likely ever to form any