vii.] INSTITUTE OF BANKERS. 197 



whereby the great Khan may have, and, in fact, has, 

 more treasure than all the kings in the world. You 

 know all about it, and the reason why." But this 

 apparent facility of creating money led, in the East, as 

 it has elsewhere, to great abuses. Sir John Mandeville, 

 who was in Tartary shortly afterwards, in 1322, tells us 

 that the " Emperour may dispenden als moche as he wile 

 withouten estymacioum. For he despendeth not, he 

 maketh no money, but of lether emprented, or of papyre. 

 . . . For there and beyonde hem thei make no money, 

 nouther of gold nor of sylver. And therefore he may 

 despende ynow and outrageously." The Great Khan 

 seems to have been himself of the same opinion. He 

 appears to have " despent outrageously," and the value 

 of the paper money again fell to a very small fraction of 

 its nominal amount, causing great discontent and misery, 

 until about the middle of the sixteenth century, under 

 the Mandchu dynasty, it was abolished, and appears to 

 have been so completely forgotten, that the Jesuit father, 

 Gabriel de Magaillans, who resided at Pekin about 1668, 

 observes that there is no recollection of paper money 

 having ever existed in the manner described by Marco 

 Polo ; though two centuries later it was again in use. 

 It must be observed, however, that these Chinese bank 

 notes differed from ours in one essential, namely, they 

 were not payable at sight. Western notes, even when 

 not payable at all, have generally purported to be ex- 

 changeable at the will of the holder, but this principle 

 the Chinese did not adopt, and their notes were only 

 payable at certain specified periods. 



Various savage races are, we know, in the habit of 

 burying with the dead his wives, slaves, or other 



