We have given these lists at length because we cannot find in the annalists of the coinage any tables of coins current at one time. It would be difficult to collect such tables from contemporary historical documents and probably it did not strike the writers to whom we have alluded that books of arithmetic are the proper quarters in which to search. There are curious indications of the absence of communion between the numismatists and the arithmeticians. Camden states that Henry VIII. is said to have coined a piece called a dandiprat, but he does not know its value: Leake, and Ruding (we believe, but we do not speak so confidently about Ruding's three quartos as about Leake's single octavo) are content to give the same information, without any knowledge of the value of the coin. Our reader has seen it, as three half-pence, in Recorde's list: he will also notice that this coin disappears in the list of 1630, probably omitted by mistake, and reappears again, and as a coin of Elizabeth, in the list of 1674.

The reader will naturally ask what the new coinage was, which was started by Newton, and which must be presumed to be the basis of our present coinage. On this history says nothing, and the records of the Mint emphatically say nothing, for they are complete enough on every other point. The truth is to be inferred from lists of coins. There was no new coinage, that is, there was no new invention of pieces. As to the current work of the Mint, a sufficient reform had long taken place. From the time of Charles II. the issue of gold pieces had consisted of five-pound pieces, double guineas, guineas, and half guineas: that of silver pieces had consisted of crowns, half-crowns, shillings, sixpences, groats, threepences, twopences, and pence. This issue was continued; and the only piece which Newton added was the quarter guinea of 1718, which was soon found inconveniently small, though it remained till the last quarter of the century. A gold coin passing at an odd number of pence over shillings must have been a great inconvenience.

We suppose that the five-pound pieces afterwards passed at five guineas. Various foreign gold coins, principally Portuguese, called Portugal pieces, came into use in the last century, so that the list of gold pieces in and about 1770 will remind us of the time of Robert Recorde. It is as follows, the less usual coins being in italics :

The recoinage of silver completed in 1699 amounted to nearly seven millions of money. It was probably not a very good specimen of the art, and it was done under a high pressure of necessity. The

coin was soon worn on the faces, and bent. John Philips wrote his poem, The Splendid Shilling, in 1703, while the new coinage was yet sound and bright. Bramston's imitation, The Crooked Sixpence, was written some years before 1744, and the title indicates that a fair proportion of the sixpences had become bent. At the beginning of the reign of George III. the shillings and sixpences had become, in everything but their extreme thinness, those little white plates which so many can remember to have circulated in 1815. But at that period the silver coin had become even more of a token than it was in 1699: and the extension and uniformity of the gold coinage, combined with the use of paper-money, and the addition of the mechanism of the Bank of England to that of the Mint, had placed the monetary system of the country on a footing of convenience wholly unknown at the Revolution. Still, the recoinage of 1816 was a large measure, requiring a great deal of administrative forethought.

This recoinage of 1816 brought our system, except only as disturbed by circulation of foreign pieces, to its present state of simplicity, by the substitution of the sovereign for the guinea. It is very much to be doubted whether either the Government or the nation would listen to any scheme of decimal coinage which requires so great an operation as the remodelling of all the silver at once. Fortunately, though not so generally understood as it ought to be, the scheme which divides the pound into 1000 new farthings, or mils, requires no immediate recall of any portion whatsoever of the coinage. If, by Act of Parliament (which would probably be thought necessary, though the Royal prerogative extends so far by itself) the half-shilling were made to contain twenty-five* farthings instead of twenty-four, the whole of the system would be established, and the commercial classes, and all who keep books, might be safely trusted to find their way to reckoning in pounds, tenths of pounds or florins, hundredths of pounds or cents of ten farthings each, and thousandths of pounds or new farthings, or mils, if that name be preferred. The calling in of the crowns, half-crowns, fourpenny and threepenny pieces need not take place: it would be enough that those which come in should not be allowed to go out again. The half-crowns, in particular, come into the Bank in enormous numbers while the harvest is growing, and go out again as the timef of reaping approaches: they might be arrested, and florins and sixpences might take their places. If a little exertion were made to help in the coins which are

This article being entirely on coinage, we say nothing about the injustice of damaging those who have six pence of copper money to the extent of a farthing once in their lives. Many persons have a horror of this spoliation. We heard a minister say as follows to a deputation:-" When a poor man has six pence in his pocket, he will have to say to himself, 'Now I have to go and work before I can make this into a silver sixpence."" We doubt whether there be in the whole of Great Britain a labouring man who ever imagined to himself a farthing's worth of work, or took the trouble to form a notion of the time it would last.

†The reason is that a reaper's wages are almost always half a crown a-day. The coin is then very convenient for payment, but it must have a tendency to cause a very great want of smaller change. A paymaster, with a box of florins and another of six pences, might pay half crowns nearly as easily as if he had single pieces; and the superior convenience of the mode of payment would be manifest the moment the money had changed hands.

not to go out again, it would be so much the better: but this is not a matter of primary necessity. The issue of silver cents (of ten farthings or mils each) might take place at leisure: and the same with such other coins as should be judged desirable.

The two schemes which have found advocates, in opposition to the retention of the present pound and florin-for which an enormous preponderance of opinion has been declared-are based upon the farthing and the penny. The effects which these systems would have upon the coinage are as follows:-

The farthing system would require coins of 10, 100, and 1000 farthings; a cent of 24d. present money, a florin of 2s. 1d. present money, and a pound of 17. Os. 10d. present money. Either a complete alteration of all the gold and silver coinage must take place, or the decimal coinage cannot exist, and decimal computation will be but an option, such as people have now if they choose. For there is nothing to hinder any one from using what mode of keeping books he pleases, provided only that he take the trouble to translate his receipts into his own system for himself, and his payments into the common system for his neighbour. But decimal reckoning will never prevail against non-decimal currency.

The penny system would require a small coin of one-tenth of a penny; though its advocates seem to incline towards preserving the farthing for the poorer classes, and making the decimalization ascend upwards from the penny. This would require a coin of 10d., say a franc, and one of 100d. or 8s. 4d., say an imperial. The inconvenience of such a coin as the imperial, decidedly as much too large for silver as it is too small for gold, strikes every one who approaches this subject. This penny system, like the farthing one, requires the complete alteration of all our coinage, both gold and silver, except the half-crown, which becomes a three-franc piece, and the crown, the reproach of our present coinage, which becomes a six-franc piece.

We have seen, in ancient times, such a confusion as that of two small gold crowns, of the same size and different values, distinguishable only by the difference between a rose and a fleur-de-lys. We have seen this same kind of confusion carried to a much greater extent, insomuch that there existed at one time, of English coins only, more than fifty in circulation, many of them undistinguishable in size and of different values. We do not read that this complexity gave rise to any complaint; it had come on gradually, people were used to it, and probably thought that the time and trouble which their money cost them were necessarily incidental to money affairs. If any thinking man had proposed simplicity for the sake of saving time and trouble, who can doubt that he would have been a person not used to the details of business, not a practical man, and so forth. Any banker would readily admit that the monetary system of 1674 would, if it existed in our day, require three times as many clerks as are now wanted. And yet, in such accounts as we have seen of the debate on the coinage, when Montague (afterwards Lord Halifax) proposed his measure, there is not a word about the multifarious character of the coins, and the difficulties thence arising. If all the packet of coinage which Jeake

has recorded, had been sound and unclipped, we have no reason to suppose that a voice would have been raised against it.

The state of things now existing is very different. The introduction of the florin, by the side of the half-crown, has been the subject of much remark, as to the liability of confusion, though there is some distinction in every point to which people must look. The introduction of the threepenny piece by the side of the fourpenny, involving the trouble of looking at the edge of the coin, has been considered a grievance by the bankers, and justly, in comparison with the distinctions between other coins. It is hardly to be supposed that much of this backward progress would be tolerated: and yet we are not without propositions the adoption of which would make the whole of our coinage, for a good many years at least, an imitation of that which formerly existed.

It has been proposed that, the sovereign remaining as now, a gold piece of the value of tenpence more should circulate with it. This would be a luxury in a dark London morning; for 17. and 17. Os. 10d. in gold would be undistinguishable by size, and the bankers' clerk would need to read every piece of gold he receives. Unless, indeed, the new coin were made thinner and broader, which would very much increase its wear. Again, it has been proposed that the coins of the penny system, the franc (10d.) and the gold imperial (8s. 4d.) should circulate with our present coinage. The difficulties of distinction would here be thrown upon the franc and the shilling, as well as upon the imperial and the half-sovereign. But there would be a greater inconvenience even than this. Suppose a person were to hand over in payment 2 sovereigns, 3 half-sovereigns, 5 imperials, 6 shillings, and 7 francs. The receiver would have to cast this up in his own way. There is an option in this coinage: a person may either use the present system, or the decimal system of the penny. One party might be expecting 67. 3s. 6d., the other might bring it in as 14 imperials, 8 francs, and 2 pence. Against such a mixture it seems to us needless to argue.

The proposers of the farthing and penny systems seem to have started with the impression that their opponents, the advocates of the scheme approved by the House of Commons, the Bank of England, &c., intended an alteration of all the silver coinage. Hence they were under no difficulty in proposing an alteration of their own. When they came to understand how easily the existing silver coinage may remain under the system voted by the House, all desirable alterations being made at perfect leisure, and in convenient time, they were under the necessity of contriving the adaptation of a similar convenience to their own systems. Hence arose their plan of two different and concurrent coinages; a plan which we are satisfied will, independently of other disadvantages, drive their proposals out of the field the moment they come to be examined in detail by the side of the plan which divides the pound into 1000 new farthings.

Since the time when gold and silver passed by weight as well as by coinage, the two, and only two, actions upon the whole of the coinage at once, have been adopted under the spur of necessity.