DECIMAL COINAGE. 247 



Pray take charge of the * International,' &c., &c., &c., Asso- 1856. 

 ciation, and blaze away from time to time, rifle-shot being better 

 than 60-pounders in such a cause. 



The 60-pounders and small shot were cast and fired with- 

 out thought of time and labour, by one who, besides his 

 expenditure of both in daily lectures, &c., at University 

 College, did more work than would have filled the time of 

 an ordinary man. 



His next public effort was the delivery of a lecture in 

 the large room of the Society of Arts, at a meeting, to of Arts. 

 which the advocates of the various plans were invited, of 

 the Decimal Association. The lecture was On the Ap- 

 proaching Simplification of the Coinage. We move very 

 slowly in good and useful directions. The ' approach ' 

 of twenty-seven years ago remains in 1882 just where it 

 was. The lecturer said : 



The various systems 1 which had been proposed had all sunk 

 out of notice but two the pound-and-mil system, and the ten- 

 penny system. These terms were used sarcastically, which was 

 no disadvantage, but then they must be correctly given. Some 

 opponents on the tenpenny side had called themselves ' Little- 

 endians/ and the pound-and-mil people ' Big-endians.' These 

 had got hold of the poker by the wrong end. Samuel Gulliver, 

 on whom all relied except the Irish bishop, who, when the 

 voyage to Lilliput appeared, declared he did not believe half of 

 it, stated that the Endian dispute arose out of the following 

 dogma : ' True believers break their eggs at the convenient 

 end.' Now, the pound-and-mil people believe that the small end 

 was that at which the coinage ought to be broken, and a small 

 crack of 4 per cent, in the copper served their purpose. But 

 the real Big-endians, the tenpenny people, smashed the sovereign 

 into tenpenny bits, making such a hole as let out all the meat 

 in getting rid of the pound and shilling. 



The lecturer showed how very small a change in the 

 present coinage need be made to introduce the new system. 

 He had been supposed to look at the matter from a 

 scientific rather than a practical point of view, and many 



1 Referring only to coinage. 



