This chapter examines an entirely new source – collections of bundles of loose receipts, notes, and bills in local record offices – to demonstrate how older forms of oral credit were augmented by the use of informal local forms of paper currency to add liquidity to local transactions. This is linked to the changing legal status of paper bills and notes. It looks at the continuing shortage of silver coins and how the increasing minting of guineas was used to make the circulation of local notes work by providing enough coins to make notes over one pound in value redeemable for cash amounts. This chapter also uses the evidence provided by the extraordinary Chronicles of John Cannon as a sort of micro-history within the argument. This is a 500,000 word set of memoirs, diary entries, and record of his scrivening activities over c.1720–1742. Finally, there is a section on the increasing use of inland bills of exchange and their relation to local notes of hand by examining the diary of the mid-eighteenth century Sussex shopkeeper Thomas Turner. The records of the Royal Mail are used to show just how developed the national bill market was by the early eighteenth century, as the transfer of such paper instruments was a major part of its growing business.

[11.1] This chapter examines how Acts are made. The procedure for that (enactment procedure) is traced from the introduction of a legislative proposal (a Bill) into Parliament through to the conversion of that Bill into an Act.

In general, when people in society refer to ‘the law’ they mean the rules made by parliaments. They have learned that ‘the parliament makes the law and the judges decide disputes.’ As a student you now know that the process of judicial interpretation inevitably strays into lawmaking, but in fact the popular understanding of law is just about right. In the modern era, the overwhelming majority of laws are made either by, or with the permission of, elected members in our Parliament.

This chapter discusses how laws are made in Hong Kong by studying the process of legislation. Issues are discussed surrounding how the Basic Law limits the scope of certain legislation and who has the authority to create legislation. Readers are taken through the step-by-step process of lawmaking in Hong Kong from the proposal to how a bill achieves status as law in Hong Kong. Both the passage of primary legislation and secondary legislation are illustrated. The interactions and balance between branches of government and between governments (the HKSAR and the PRC) are exemplified in the process of legislation.