192 TRAVELS IN 
their scarcity. To have issued them at par with the paper 
currency to be trafficked with for the benefit of individuals, 
when that profit could fairly and honorably be applied to the 
public service, would be a criminal neglect in those who were 
entrusted with the government. The merchant, no doubt, 
took care to cover the per centage paid on his remittances by 
a proportionate advance on his goods ; and thus the exchange 
might operate as a trifling indirect tax on the general con- 
sumer of foreign articles, which the increased prosperity of 
the colony very well enabled them to pay. 
The amount of bills thus drawn for the contingent and ex- 
traordinary expences of the army, from the 1st of October 
1795, when the colony was taken, to the 28th of July 1802, 
the time it should have been evacuated, as appears from the 
Deputy Paymaster's books, is 1,045,814/. 14s. Id. upon 
part of which (for part was drawn at par for specie) the profit 
derived to his Majesty's government amounts to the sum of 
115,719/. 3s. Id. 
Another source of profit, which might have been very con- 
siderable, was derived from the importation of specie. The 
pay of the soldiers, as I have observed above, was invariably 
made in hard money, and not in paper currency. The 
Spanish dollar was issued in payment to the troops at the 
rate of five shillings sterling, which was always its nominal 
value at the Cape ; and, I imagine, it might have been pur- 
chased and sent out at four shillings and fourpence, making 
thus a profit of more than fifteen per cent, on the pay, as well 
as on the extraordinaries, of the army. The sum that was 
