248 MEMOIR OF AUGUSTUS DE MORGAN. 



1856. writers had objected to his having a voice in the question. 

 But these writers did not know or had forgotten that he 

 was an actuary of twenty-five years' standing, besides 

 being a teacher of monetary Arithmetic. He had also 

 a position which made him better able to judge than he 

 would have been either as a Mathematician or as an 

 actuary. He had been for twelve years J a manager of a 

 savings bank, and in that capacity had had, scores upon 

 scores of times, to receive and pay out from two to 

 three hundred pounds in a couple of hours, and in all 

 kinds of coins, from a shilling and some halfpence up- 

 wards. When he looked at the banker's clerk, with his 

 luxurious table and his convenient scoop, and all his other 

 paraphernalia, he at the pay- table of the savings bank 

 looked upon that same clerk as an aristocrat, who knew 

 little of the difficulties of humble life. 



The lecture was followed by a discussion, Mr. De 

 Morgan in the chair, which lasted two evenings, and in 

 which the members of the International Decimal Asso- 

 ciation, who wished to adopt the French system entire, 

 and the c tenpenny people ' defended their respective 

 plans. The sense of the meeting was ultimately taken, 

 when, with one exception only, the opinions were declared 

 to be in favour of the pound-and-mil system. At this 

 time some articles by Mr. De Morgan On the Approach- 

 ing Simplification of the Coinage, intended to make the 

 subject clear to all classes, were published in the Metro- 

 politan. 



In the spring of 1857 Lord Overstone, one of the 

 Commissioners for inquiring into the subject of decimal 

 coinage, communicated sixty-five questions to the Decimal 

 Association. These questions were answered by Mr. De 

 Morgan, Sir J. F. W. Herschel, the Dean of Ely, the 

 Astronomer Royal, Professor Miller, Mr. W. Miller, 

 Mr. J. B. Franklin, and others. Those which were 



1 During our residence in Camden Street. He thought this the 

 best way in which he could be useful to his poorer neighbours. 



