DECIMAL COINAGE. 237 



reckoning in money in the first instance. ' Education,' 1856. 

 he said, ' must promote the demand for a complete decimal 

 system, but the application of the principle to coinage 

 only must first promote education.' In answer to the 

 question, ' how much of the time spent in education in 

 Great Britain and Ireland is spent in overcoming the 

 disadvantage of our present system of coinage ? ' he said, 

 ' I believe that five per cent, is under the mark, taking 

 in all classes ; that in purely commercial schools it is a 

 great deal more ; but that in all together, from Oxford 

 and Cambridge down to the lowest village school, more 

 than one-twentieth of the whole time passed in every kind 

 of learning and practising is lost, by the having two 

 systems of Arithmetic to learn, the common decimal, and 

 the monetary.' 



At the end of the year 1841 the Report of the Commis- Report of 

 sion of 1838 was made. In it the Commission strongly S ion! ra 

 recommended the adoption of a decimal scale of weights 

 and measures preparatory to a change in the money ; than 

 which, the Report says, ' no single change which it is in 

 the power of our Government to effect would be felt 

 as equally beneficial when the temporary inconvenience 

 attending it had passed away.' The details of the change 

 recommended are those set forth by Mr. De Morgan in 

 the Companion to the Almanac. 



In the year 1842 he gave more extensive information 

 on the subject in the same work, and in the next year 

 (1843) another Commission to inquire into weights and 

 measures was appointed. It consisted of the Astronomer 

 Royal, Lord Wrottesley, the Dean of Ely, the Speaker, Sir 

 John Herschel, Sir J. W. Lubbock, Rev. R. Sheepshanks, 

 and Professor Miller. 



The next step was taken in 1847 by Dr. Bo wring, 

 afterwards Sir John Bowring, who brought forward the 

 subject in the House of Commons. The florin, or one- 

 tenth of a pound, now in circulation, was in consequence 

 issued by Government, but no further attempt was made 



