DECIMAL COINAGE. 245 



All the old arguments were considered, and the 1856. 

 answers to them repeated and enlarged. As to the Mr ; ^ owe 



r and the 



witticisms of Mr. Lowe, they had been answered by Mr. appie- 

 De Morgan in a paper published by the Decimal Associa- argument. 

 tion, Reply to the Facetice of the Member for Kidderminster. 

 ' Mr. Lowe is of opinion/ the Westminster Review says, 

 ' that if a poor man owed another a penny, for which four 

 mils is too little, and five mils too much, this mil between 

 them would lead to a mill between them; and some of the 

 conscript fathers cheered him.' In the 'Reply,' a 

 dialogue between an orange boy and the member for 

 Kidderminster shows, in the method of the latter, how the 

 supposed difficulties in a money transaction with an old 

 apple woman might be overcome. 



The Review takes in the substance of the two Reports 

 of Commissioners, 1841 and 1853 ; the Report of the 

 Committee of the House of Commons, 1854; the debate 

 of June 12, 1855 ; the publications of the Decimal 

 Association, and the Journal of the Society of Arts, with 

 a list of about one hundred publications on the subject in 

 1853, 1854, and 1855. At the end of this year 1855 he wrote 

 for the Companion to the Almanac of 1856, Notes on the 

 History of the English Coinage, giving many particulars of 

 the history and origin of money in England and other 

 countries, both as to coins and accounts. Speaking of 

 the ruined and confused state which the coinage had 

 reached at the time of the Restoration, he describes the 

 reform projected by Montague, afterwards Lord Halifax, 

 and carried into effect during his administration by Sir I. 

 Newton, who only added to the pieces already in circula- 

 tion the quarter-guinea, which was found too small for 

 use. A note in the author's handwriting states, 'The 

 next Scientific Master of the Mint coined a quarter- 

 sovereign, which was never circulated.' Sir John Herschel 

 gave my husband one of these pretty little gold coins, 

 which he valued greatly. It was lost, in moving, after 

 his death. 



