TRANSACTIONS OF THE SECTIONS. 179 
that it would retain permanently the British pound and shilling; but at the same 
time it would do great violence to the values of our copper coins to force them into 
accordance with it: it would alter the relation between the existing silver and 
copper coins, the relation with which ignorant people have to deal; and above all 
it is arbitrary, and has little chance of becoming international or permanent. On 
the other hand a truly natural system, if once adopted by Great Britain, would 
inevitably make its way by its intrinsic merit among all sufliciently intelligent 
nations: just as the metrical system of weights and measures, after it was adopted 
by one great nation, is thus spreading, because it is not only a decimal system but 
natural also, z.e. one in which the measures of length, of surface, of capacity, and 
the weights are all related to one another in that way which is theoretically the 
simplest, in other words, in the way which is sure to prove practically the most 
convenient upon a sufficiently wide experience. 
The proposai to make the dollar of five francs our unit is undoubtedly recom- 
mended by the circumstance that this dollar is a coin which agrees tolerably with 
some part of the existing coinage of several countries. But the advantage is tran- 
sitory, and could only be secured at the price of fastening upon the world a coinage 
with the following three permanent defects :— 
1. The dollar is a unit less adapted than a larger unit for estimating considerable 
sums, and at the same time its next decimal multiple, the ten-dollar piece, has 
been found inconveniently large. 
2. It does not fall in with the metrical system of weights and measures, since 
the dollar of five francs, being the fourth part of a napoleon, contains 145 centigrams 
of gold. This defect entails many lasting disadvantages, and among them that— 
3. On this account it would be exceedingly difficult, or rather quite impracticable, 
to keep it up to its value in the units of all nations. 
There is only one course which will provide in the most effectual way that is 
attainable against the tampering with coinage of which the world has seen so 
many disgraceful examples, and that is to make the numerical relation between 
the weight of pure gold in a coin and the statement of its value the simplest pos- 
sible ; and there is but one way of doing this, viz. by taking the gram of pure 
gold as the unit of value. The number that represents the value of a coin would 
then bear the simplest relation that is possible to its fineness and its weight. Thus 
if the coin be 1iths fine, weigh it in centigrams, subtract one-twelfth from the 
number of centigrams, and the remainder expresses the value of the coin in cents. 
Finally, it would be well to keep in view that there is something which men 
will naturally regard with approval in the maintenance of a gold coinage at as high 
a standard of fineness as is compatible with wear. 
It may reasonably be urged that it is by a regard to such feelings, and by con- 
siderations of durability and other valuable physical properties, that we should be 
principally guided in deciding what fineness shall be given to our coins, The 
coinage of Great Britain stands foremost in reputation over the world, a position 
partly won by its fineness, a position which does credit to us as a nation, and which 
we ought not lightly to resign. If we rendered our coinage a truly natural system 
by bringing it into harmony with the metrical system of weights and measures, so 
as to blend all (weights, measures, and coinage) into one consistent whole, we 
should be lasting benefactors of mankind in the same sense in which the French 
were when they gave existence to the metrical system—a system which, wherever 
it is adopted, is destined to benefit all posterity. 
The best way to begin the introduction of the natural system of coinage would 
probably be to coin copper cents with the inscription, “This coin is worth one 
centigram of gold.” The cent should pass current as one-third of a penny. This 
might be followed up by withdrawing the. halfpenny, the farthing, and the three- 
_ penny piece from circulation, and by issuing a silver decim or ten-cent piece. This 
coin would be worth 3 pence and a cent, and should bear the inscription, “ Worth 
one decigram of gold.” 
Classification of Labour. By F. Wruson. 
