206 REPORT— 1870. 



the disadvantage in all that relates to numbers in quitting our arithmetical basis is 

 manifest, continuous, and vmiversal. That basis stands as the common figure, 

 while money, weights, and measiu-es are, as it were, so many varieties of its 

 clothing. The latter must be adapted to the former and not left to other forms, 

 even if in the abstract superior, j^s well might a tailor cut his suits from some 

 model Apollo instead of his customer's own shape ; nor would the customer feel much 

 more comfortable even if convinced that Apollo's figure was the better of the two. 



An International Unit. — The grand test of suitability must be general use. Thus 

 tried, we find a middle region of fairly suitable uuits from a franc to a dollar. 

 Lower values, as the real and the piastre, provoke the substitution of a higher unit 

 when large amoimts are dealt with. The Tiu-ks, for instance, whose piastre is only 

 l^f/., tell up their revenues or debt by " purses," while a Frenchman is loyal to his 

 franc even up to " milliards," and an American to his dollar in thousand millions. 

 Our pound is of course the most convenient of all in such high-value regions, but 

 it entirely fails elsewhere. The trading classes ignore it to a very great extent, aa 

 their shops and stalls everywhere testify, by such ticketed prices as 25s., 50s., 100s., 

 even 120s. upwards, instead of pounds. The vast mass of the poorer classes is still 

 further from the pound. Probably more than half the money dealings of all classes 

 together are for values under a pound. What does this mean, and what its dis- 

 advantage ? No less than this, that of all this everlasting business of society the 

 greater part is done in fractions instead of integers, which is much as though a 

 traveller took one part of his journey in the usual forward motion and the other 

 part backwards. The disadvantage is not felt in each individual step or even in a 

 hundred, it is in the huge collective total of the jovimey. It is like the minute frac- 

 tion of extra cost that seemed quite unworthy of attention, until we could realize 

 that even the hundredth of a penny was important in millions of yards. 



The franc, then, seems the lowest, as the dollar seems the highest, value that 

 experience indicates as suitable by the test of general use. The other principal 

 units are all vmder the dollar, our solitary and anomalous pound excepted. Perhaps 

 the special well-being of America assists a rather high unit, thus confirming the 

 view of its extreme position ; but the scale of modern finance requires the highest 

 value — the dollar rather than the franc. But, again, authority and habit cannot be 

 ignored in this question, and the franc is backed by eighty millions of people com- 

 prised in the successfid International League of 1865. The choice is perhaps re- 

 stricted to one or other of these two units ; either of them is greatly more suitable 

 to us than the pound. 



The Decimal Association has decided on a ten-franc unit. By the foregoing data 

 this is proved obviously too high. The countless users of a franc imit will not, 

 indeed cannot, rise to a ten-franc. The Association is a great authority; but another 

 no less, the Paris International Conference of 1807, preferred the five-franc, that is, 

 the dollar value. Our present moneys, the Association contend, could be readily 

 adapted to the ten-franc unit : true, but so they could to the five-franc, and even 

 more readily ; for with the small alteration suggested last year by Mr. Lowe, the 

 new coinage would be fifths of a pound (the new unit) and double pounds, or ten 

 times the unit. The subsidiary silver and copper money would, with their allow- 

 able margin of seigniorage, be as easily dealt with. Here he would remark that, 

 to carry out decimals in their integi-ity, there should be no intermediate coins ; most 

 countries, indeed all countries, decimal as well as non-decimal, are inveterate in 

 this practice, which violates all decimal simplicity. 



Of what importance is the International Arranfiement ? — Persons not imdistin- 

 guished have answered in effect, "None ; " little more than a convenience to excur- 

 sionists. Such views seem incredible. There are certain gi-eat barriers to general 

 intercourse — the foreign element, the different language, and the different moneys 

 and measures. An international monetary .and metric system would entirely sweep 

 away the last, not perhaps the least, of these barriers. " 



Statistics on Tobacco, its Use and Abuses. Bij E. WiLKmsoN, L.C.P. 

 The main object of this paper was to show that the use of tobacco in its various 

 forms tended to weaken the vital functions of the body, to interrupt the uniform ily 



