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An Examination of the Objections urged against the plan of Decimal Coinage proposed by the Royal Commissioners and by the Select Committee of the House of Commons
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 18 August 2016
Extract
It is now somewhat more than twelve months ago that the decimal coinage question was brought under the notice of this Institute, and that a resolution was thereupon unanimously come to approving of the plan recommended by the Committee of the House of Commons. Since that decision, public attention has been repeatedly called to the subject; and although various plans have been proposed and discussed, founded on a different basis from the one thus recommended, it must, I think, be conceded, that none of them have made any serious impression on the public mind, but that, on the contrary, the one proposed by the Committee has made some if not considerable progress in the course of the sifting which the question generally has undergone.
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- Copyright © Institute and Faculty of Actuaries 1855
References
page 294 note * Were the labour augmented as Mr. Rathbone imagines, it would be increased one third, not one fourth only.
page 297 note * Two publications of this kind have already appeared—one by Mr. Robert Mears, and another by Mr. Walford. They are both very ably got up, and are calculated to be of much practical utility, should the proposed change take place.
page 300 note * I believe, Mr. John Middleton Hare, Jun., B.A., of St. John's College, Cambridge —the author also of a very able letter on the subject, addressed to the Chancellor of the Exchequer. The following paragraph, which occurs in his letter, very happily exposes the kind of arguments occasionally brought forward by the opponents of the Committee's plan:—
“The next comparison is the most ludicrous of any, and one that it could scarcely be conceived possible for anyone to have had the rashness to put forward. I give it word for word as it occurs.
“‘The pound, florin, cent, and mil scheme requires an abstruse decimal system of calculation, difficult to be comprehended by the less informed, and involving great risk of error in its use. The pound, tenpenny, and penny scheme does not even require a decimal notation, except when a less sum than a penny is required, and except where wanted in calculation that may be marked or not by a vulgar fraction.’
This would seem to be hardly a fair comparison, following as it does one which describes the Committee's plan as unworthy of the name of decimal … It is most amusing to find the tenpenny scheme recommended because it does not require a decimal notation, whereas it is this very decimality that is so much desired, and that will produce so many benefits. But is it not absurd that any proposed scheme calling itself a decimal one should adduce as a circumstance in its favour that vulgar fractions may be still used under it?”