Remittance

“ He was shipped off with just enough money in his pocket—no, in the purser’s pocket—for the needs of the voyage—and when he reached his destined port he would find a remittance awaiting him there. Not a large one, but just enough to keep him a month. A similar remittance would come monthly thereafter. It was the remittance-man’s custom to pay his month’s board and lodging straightway—a duty which his landlord did not allow him to forget—then spree away the rest of his money in a single night, then brood and mope and grieve in idleness till the next remittance came. It is a pathetic life. ”

“ But one franc apiece remained out of the fifteen with which we left Marseilles. B—— wrote home some time ago, directing a remittance to be forwarded to a merchant at Paris, to whom he had a letter of introduction, and in the hope that this had arrived, he determined to enclose the letter in a note, stating our circumstances, and requesting him to forward a part of the remittance to Lyons. We had then to wait at least four days; people are suspicious and mistrustful in cities, and if no relief should come, what was to be done? ”

“ They say that the first of the two remittances under consideration is not proved to have been other than money, but as it was only $10,000 its application to the note could not be required. The larger remittance was in drafts, and their application could not be required. ”

“ It makes the merchant unable to remit, when remittance is necessary for his own credit, and for the general adjustment of commercial balances. I am not now discussing the general question, whether prices must not come down, and adjust themselves anew to the amount of bullion existing in Europe and America. I am dealing only with the measures of our own government on the subject of the currency, and I insist that these measures have been most unfortunate, and most ruinous in their effects on the ordinary means of our circulation at home, and on our ability of remittance abroad. ”

“ This article by no means proves, that no remittances were to be made of proceeds on sales in a neutral country; tho’ the children might have had remittances in that train of intercourse, yet the mode might have been thought too circuitous and dilatory. A remittance in a direct line was more eligible. Besides, remittances on sales abroad could only be in money or bills ”

“ The same results follow on the supposition of money. Commerce being supposed to be in a state of equilibrium when the obligatory remittances begin, the first remittance is necessarily made in money. This lowers prices in the remitting country, and raises them in the receiving. ”

“ Whoever, with the intent to evade a remittance fee to be collected in accordance with this subsection, and who has knowledge that, at the time of a remittance transfer, the value of the funds involved in the transfer will be further transferred to a recipient located outside of the United States, requests or facilitates such remittance transfer to a recipient located outside of the United States shall be subject to a penalty of not more than $500,000 or twice the value of the funds involved in the remittance transfer, whichever is greater, or imprisonment for not more than 20 years, or both. ”

“ The supposed annual remittances being made in commodities, and being exports for which there is to be no return, it is no longer requisite that the imports and exports should pay for one another: on the contrary, there must be an annual excess of exports over imports, equal to the value of the remittance. ”

“ A foreigner thinks "an Exchange business"—that is, the buying and selling bills on foreign countries—a main part of banking. As I have explained, remittance is one of the subsidiary conveniences which early banks subserve before deposit banking begins. But the mass of English country bankers only give bills on places in England or on London, and in London the principal remittance business has escaped out of the hands of the bankers. Most of them would not know how to carry through a great "Exchange operation," or to "bring home the returns." They would as soon think of turning silk merchants. ”

“ The foreign sales agency often collects the accounts and remits total collections periodically by purchase of one bill or draft on its local bank for the total. There must, of course, accompany each such remittance a statement of the detailed receipts for proper credit to individual accounts. The general cash book will show only the total remittance, however. Regular agency accounts as explained in Chapter XXX will secure the control of the home office over the agency’s expenditures.
It is usually best to make the foreign customers ledger self-balancing. ”

“ To a man possessed of only forty pounds any bill will seem tremendous. This one was for nearly two hundred; and at the end of the long list of items, the biggest of which was that bathroom without water that had sent Annalise out on strike, was the information that a remittance would oblige. A remittance! Poor Fritzing. ”

“ That no remittance or payment in Money, Merchandize, or Bills of Exchange, shall be made by any of the Citizens, or Subjects, of any of the Powers composing this Association, to the Citizens or Subjects of the offending Nation, for the Term of one year, or until reparation be made. ”

“ We are enclosing a statement of your account and we request as a special favor that you send us a remittance previous to the 28th of this month if possible. The amount is small, but not the less important. We have unusually heavy obligations maturing on the first of next month and you will understand that for the proper conduct of business the flow of credit should not be dammed up. ”

“ You will be pleased, Gentlemen, to give me very early notice of your situation, and to point out very particularly the sums which may be needful, and also the articles of this country, which will probably form the best remittance, and on my part I promise to take the earliest measures for making you such remittances. ”

“ In all which places we receive either money, bills of exchange, or commodities that suit for remittance to Britain; which, together with all the profits on the industry of our merchants and mariners, arising in those circuitous voyages, and the freights made by their ships, centre finally in Britain to discharge the balance, and pay for British manufactures continually used in the province, or sold to foreigners by our traders. ”

“ Remittances of bars are made to Lima every week. Last week the remittance amounted to seven thousand five hundred marks — a large yield. Since my return, I cut from a Lima paper a letter from Cerro Pasco, of April, 1851, (a few months before the date of my visit,) in which the writer states the remittances for the week at eighteen bars, or four thousand five hundred marks. ”

“ It seems to us that these authorities are founded in good sense and convenience: until the parties, receiving the consignment or remittance, had done some act recognising the appropriation of it to the particular purposes specified, and the persons claiming had signified their acceptance of it, so as to create a priority between them; the property and proceeds remained at the risk and on the account of the remitter, or owner. ”

“ When a country is habituated to the use of notes for making payments, they can be very usefully employed for purposes of remittance also. But a note-issuing authority puts itself in a difficulty if it provides facilities for remittance before a general habit has grown up of using notes for other purposes. If, on the other hand, the notes had been made universal legal tender, but only encashable at Presidency towns, there would undoubtedly have been a premium on coin at certain times of the year. ”

“ But if there is a greater sum due from England to France, than is due from France to England, or vice versâ, the debts cannot be simply written off against one another. After the one has been applied, as far as it will go, towards covering the other, the balance must be transmitted in the precious metals. In point of fact, the merchant who has the amount to pay, will even then pay for it by a bill. When a person has a remittance to make to a foreign country, he does not himself search for some one who has money to receive from that country, and ask him for a bill of exchange. ”

“ Now, in the first place, there is nothing more objectionable in a money payment than in payment by any other medium, if the state of the market makes it the most advantageous remittance; and the money itself was first acquired, and would again be replenished, by the export of an equivalent value of our own products. But, in the next place, a very short interval of paying in money would so lower prices as either to stop a part of the importation, or raise up a foreign demand for our produce, sufficient to pay for the imports. ”

“ He told me how irresponsible you had been for years after leaving college—how at last, in desperation, he asked you to leave Scotland for Scotland’s good. In fact, you came over to America as a remittance-man, didn’t you? ”

“ So much for the transaction from the importer's standpoint—‌what does the seller of the goods get out of it? Payment for his goods as soon as he is ready to ship them. No waiting for a remittance, no drawing of a dollar-draft on an obscure firm in Paterson, N.J., which no Canton bank will be willing to buy at any price. The credit constitutes authority for the shipper to draw in pounds sterling on London—‌the one kind of draft which he can always be sure of turning at once into local currency and at the most favorable rate of exchange. ”

“ The tribute, subsidy, or remittance, is always in goods; for, unless the country possesses mines of the precious metals, and numbers those metals among its regular articles of export, it cannot go on, year after year, parting with them, and never receiving them back. ”

“ An exchange draft is used more frequently than a shipment of currency.'
It thus appears that the custom, if otherwise established, does not fix a definite and uniform method of remittance. When checks are sent for collection and return, the bank is expected to cancel the checks, and charge them to the account of the drawers, and remit 'by means of its exchange draft of by a shipment of currency,' the former being used more frequently than the latter. Whether the choice of methods is at the election of the drawee bank or the collecting bank does not appear. ”

“ Should, however, the difficulties of remittance on so large a scale render it necessary at any time, the power shall be executed and the money thus unemployed abroad shall, in conformity with that law, be faithfully applied here in an equivalent extinction of domestic debt. ”

“ A man brings money to the bank to meet a payment which he desires to make at a great distance, and the bank, having a connection with other banks, sends it where it is wanted. As soon as bills of exchange are given upon a large scale, this remittance is a very pressing requirement. Such bills must be made payable at a place convenient to the seller of the goods in payment of which they are given, perhaps at the great town where his warehouse is. But this may be very far from the retail shop of the buyer who bought those goods to sell them again in the country. ”

“ The result is a moral certainty that no such remittance as you mention can have reached our house, and a literal certainty that no such remittance has been paid to our account at the bank.
“It is needless, at this stage of the proceedings, to trouble you with details. The money has unquestionably been stolen in the course of its transit from you to us. ”

“ Remittances were made in cash, so long as it could be obtained. That period is past, and the merchant must now look for remittances where alone they ought ever to be found, in the produce of the country. Business is just now returning into its proper channel, from which it had been diverted by the violence of war, and the fluctuations of paper credit. The rapid population of a country is an agreeable circumstance; but every profession ought to increase in a due proportion. ”

“ The Secretary of State is in effect the ultimate source of supply for bills on India, and the banks, after securing what private bills are available, even up their demands for remittance to India by buying bills from him,— provided he is selling them at a rate which makes this form of remittance cheaper than the alternative one of sending sovereigns. ”

“ Another sort of remittance which does not immediately take the form of cash, is the prepaid ticket for passage to an American port, sent to friends and relatives to assist them to emigrate. The United States consuls at Bergen and Gothenburg reported that about one-half of the emigrants from Norway and Sweden in 1891 made the journey on tickets sent from America. [225] In this connection, it should be noted that the money thus spent by immigrants is not in the nature of a permanent investment of hoarded earnings ”

“ Your intimation that you expect more money from us obliges us to expose to you our circumstances. Upon the supposition that Congress had borrowed in America but $5,000,000, and relying on the remittances intended=315= to be sent to us for answering other demands, we gave expectations that we should be able to pay here the interest of that sum as a means of supporting the credit of the currency. The Congress have borrowed near twice that sum, and are now actually drawing on us for the interest, the bills appearing here daily for acceptance. ”

“ By the act of receiving the bill, the defendants agree to hold it until paid; and its contents when paid to the use of the remitter. It is entire to the remitter to give, and countermand, his own directions respecting the bill as often as he pleases; and the persons to whom the bill is remitted may still hold the bill till received, and its amount, when received, for the use of the remitter himself; until by some engagement entered into between themselves with the person, who is the object of the remittance, they have precluded themselves from so doing ”