SOUTHERN AFRICA. 191 
lion. The hard money that was brought into the colony 
from time to time, for the purpose of paying the troops, 
always found its way to India and China, Avhich made it 
extremely difficult for the Paymaster to collect the necessary 
sums. But so tenacious was Lord Macartney in adhering to 
the principle of paying the soldiers in specie, that, notwith- 
standing the difficulties and the delay which sometimes oc- 
•curred in procuring it, he chose rather to let the troops go 
in arrear, than pay them in paper with the highest premium 
added to it, to prevent the possibility of a suspicion entering 
a soldier's mind, that he might be cheated. The premium 
which Government bills bore in exchange for paper currency 
fluctuated from five to thirty per cent., but was fixed, for the 
greater part of the time, at twenty per cent. They would, 
indeed, have advanced to a much higher rate; for the mer- 
chant, unable to make his remittances to any great extent in 
colonial produce, or in India goods, which, if permitted, 
might have been injurious to the interests of the East India 
Company, was under the necessity of purchasing these bills. 
Lord Macartney, however, considered it expedient to fix the 
premium at twenty per cent., deeming it right that govern- 
ment bills should bear the highest premium of bills that 
might be in the market, but, at the same time, not to proceed 
to such a height as to become oppressive either to the mer- 
chant or the public. The drawing of these bills was there- 
fore a source of profit to government. Being an article of 
merchandize anions; the English traders who had their re- 
mittances to make, and the demand for them exceeding the 
amount that was necessary to be drawn for the extraordinaries 
of tlie armj^, the premium would have risen in proportion to 
