[Memorandum.], this 4th day of April, 1866

[Memorandum.]

The undersigned, representatives of Great Britain, France, the United States of America, and the Netherlands, having considered the communications that have passed between their respective governments, at London, Paris, and the Hague, relative to the mode in which the first instalment of the Simonoseki indemnity, amounting to five hundred thousand dollars, which was received from the Japanese government by the undersigned on the 4th of September last, should be remitted to Europe, are of opinion that the proposal of her Britannic Majesty’s government that this sum should be paid into the British commissariat chest, at Yokohama, and that its equivalent in sterling money should be held available by her Majesty’s treasury in London, for distribution among the four powers, is unobjectionable, and may be adopted with advantage to the interests of their respective governments.

They therefore approve of the transfer of this sum from the Yokohama branch banks of the Oriental Bank Corporation and the chartered Mercantile Bank of India, London and China, to the British commissariat chest, at the British official rate of exchange of four shillings and three pence per dollar, the equivalent of the said sum in sterling money being accordingly one hundred and sixty thousand and two hundred and fifty pounds, (£160,250.)