TRANSACTIONS OF THE SECTIONS. 189 



•900 fine, and ty coining the half-crown of 15 grams standard silver, as then 

 5 crowns will contain the same amoimt of fine silver as 6 five-franc pieces. The 

 shilling containing six grams of silver, the franc, if of the same fineness, will contain 

 five grams of silver. The silver rupee of India and the silver dollar admit of easy 

 adjustments. 



8. Economies of Decimal Coitutge. 

 Several imits of weight are required, and when the Roman notation was in use 

 the advantages of connecting these units by the factor ten were not clear. It was 

 accordingly never done in England. In troy weight four units are recognized, the 



frain, the pennyweight, the ounce, and the pound ; 24 grains make one pennvweight, 

 pennyweights one ounce, 12 ounces one pound. The money units are tased on 

 these weights ; 240 pennyweights of silver were a pound,and were so called, //J/'w, the 

 origin of our £1. The pound sterling and the penny fell in evil days to a third of 

 their primary weight, still 12 pence became a shilling, 20 shillings =240 pence = £1. 

 Then the penny was halved and quartered, so there are four money units in use. 

 connected by the factors 20, 12, and 4; thus £1 = 20 shillings = 240 pence = 960 

 farthings. The clumsy Roman notation was discarded and was displaced by the 

 beautiful Arabic notation, where each figure in a series is ten more, or a tenth 

 less than the same figm-e to its right or left ; hence all the transcendent achieve- 

 ments of modern arithmetic. Unfortunately om- money as well as weight and 

 measure units remained unaltered, and all are now in a state so chaotic as to 

 reflect disgrace on the intelligence of England. To perform a simple sum in 

 compoimd multiplication or division is beyond the powers of ninety-nine in a 

 hundred educated men, who, on leaving school, forget the tables which have per- 

 plexed, wearied, and wasted so many of their hours. 



It is difiicult to estimate the economy of time and thought through the whole of 

 life to be realized by the substitution of units decimally related to each other in 

 the place of the units now in use. 



France, Spain, Portugal, Holland, Belgium, Switzerland, Italy, Austria, Russia, 

 Greece, Sweden, Turkey, China, Japan, and the United States of America, have 

 all decimal moneys of account, and England would probably have already enjoyed 

 this inestimable advantage had it not been for the difficulties of dealing with the 

 penny. The penny is the rock on which the late project of decimalization split. The 

 phantom of a duodecimal notation in arithmetic deceived nobody. The price of a 

 peat number of articles is measured by the penny. Thus the price of 4 lbs. of bread 

 18 6i(?. ; mutton is Q^d., beef \0d. a pound. In all such instances the price in gold 

 units can be expressed with great accuracy ; and a slight variation of price could 

 give rise to no inconvenience, for the prices are pei-petuaUy fluctuating ; as they 

 are regulated by supply and demand, prices could be more acciu-ately adjusted and 

 expressed in cents than in pence. The price of 4 lbs. of bread is 6|c?., but what is 

 the price of 1 lb. ? That is not easily expressed. Certain articles are so constantly 

 associated with the penny as their price that this coin is looked upon almost as an 

 English institution. There is, for instance, the penny toll of some bridges, the 

 penny postage, and the penny newspaper, to say nothing of many other pcn^v 

 articles. The price is thus expressed because the penny coin exists!^ just as prices 

 in America are expressed in cents. 



9. Eccmomies of Intel-national Coinage. 



The value of money is, like the value of all other commodities, local : 100 pieces 

 of gold in England may purchase a bill to entitle its owner to receive 101 or 100 

 pieces of the same coin in Australia. The rate of exchange where the same coins 

 are in use is thus expressed in the simplest manner possible. The recoo-nition of 

 one gold coin as the international medium of exchange gives all the contracting' 

 countries the same simple par. But it is different where the money units are not 

 the same ; there the calculations grow so intricate as to be unintelligible to the 

 public, and to be troublesome even to adepts. Many examples may be cited from 

 the pages of Mr. Tait. 



Traders, if trade prices of commodities are quoted in international money and 

 measures, will have no difficidty in perceiving at a glance the state of the markets 

 and the cun-ents of trade. ' 



