190 REPORT — 1869. 



Travellers with international money will sustain less loss, and less discomfort 

 than they now encounter abroad. 



The relations between man and man will thus be enlarged and multiplied in 

 indefinite, proportions, when all things are measured, weighed, bought, and sold by 

 the same units. 



10. The 25-franc and the 25-shiIlin(/ gold unit*. 



All the advantages of the decimal notation can be enjoyed under a gold unit of 

 either of these values ; but to be scientific, symmetric, international, the 2.5-franc 

 coin and the sovereign must consist of exactly 8 grams of gold of the same fineness, 

 coined under the same conditions of seigniorage. Then the after-passage from an 

 8-gram unit to the use of a 10-gra.m unit will be easy, and will end in a complete 

 identification of decimal money units with metric weights of gold, as everlasting 

 as the basis of the metric system. The inconvenience of the change will be real 

 and transitorj', but the benefit to mankind will be perpetual. By a slight sacrifice 

 the present generation will earn the gratitude of posterity, while it vsdll be more 

 than repaid for its pains in the course of two or three years of its own existence. 



In the metric measures, weights, and money, the trade of the world will enjoy 

 perfect instruments, facilitating the exchange of commodities as much as the steam- 

 engine accelerates their carriage. 



On our National Accounts. By Feank P. Fellowes, F.S.A., F.S.S. 



The paper, after detailing the steps that were being taken to carry out the re- 

 commendations of Mr. Seely's Committee on Admiralty Moneys and Accounts, 

 advocated the adoption of similar methods for other departments of Government. 

 These may be briefly described as having for their object, amongst other reforms, 

 the unification of all accounts having any relation to the Admiralty expenditure. 

 This paper pointed out that with the Admiralty, as with several other depart- 

 ments, there were three great classes of accounts. First, the estimates of money 

 required for the service of each department in the ensuing jeax. These estimates 

 are voted by the House of Commons in Committee of Supply, and they are divided 

 as below : — Army Estimates, Navy Estimates, Civil Service Estimates (which are 

 divided into seven great classes or subdivisions, called Class I. to VIL), and the 

 revenue departments, being Inland Revenue, Customs, Post-office, and Post-office 

 Packet Service. The second series of accounts are the " Appi'opriation Accounts," 

 which give the money each department has received from the Treasuiy as contra- 

 distinguished from the money voted by the House of Commons, or, in other words, 

 the money the Treasury has been authorized by Parliament to expend on the 

 special services for which it was voted. These second series follow the order and 

 form of the estimates, and give in one column the money voted, and in the other 

 the money expended, so called, but, strictly speaking, this is only the money each 

 department has received from the Treasury, and it may not follow that all this has 

 been expended. The third series of accounts are accounts published by the various 

 dena'^.iients, giving detailed accoimts of the expenditure or of parts thereof, and 

 these the author gave the generic term of Departmental Expense Accoimts. This 

 paper pointed out that one of the great objects of the scheme of accoimts devised 

 by Mr. Seely and ]\Ir. Fellowes, which scheme is now being introduced into the 

 Admiralty, was the unification of these three series of accounts, and the paper ad- 

 vocated this for the accounts of other departments. By these means the Admiralty 

 estimates, though remaining in the same form as at present, so far as the order and 

 method in which the House of Commons voted the supplies, would be so retabu- 

 lated and rearranged, that in addition to showing, as now, the salaries it was in- 

 tended to vote, the wages, the stores proposed to be purchased, there would be 

 given the amount of wages required for shipbuilding and maintaining, salaries 

 required for superintendence and stores for this purpose, so that, in short, the 

 House would have before them the whole amount of the navy estimates, in divi- 

 sions, as follows : — Division 1, for naval yards, for shipbuilding, repairing, and main- 



* " Taking it altogether, the shilling is much more frequently and numerously repre- 

 sented in other coinages than the franc." — Bullion and Foreign Exchanges. By Ernest 

 Seyd, page 690, where he cites several examples. 



