DECIMAL COINAGE.
, _ ,Leeds, 6th September 1853. Sin—In your remarks on this subject, page 856 of last Saturday's Spec- tator, I notice some observations on a suggestion of Mr. William Entwisle, which might lead to a misapprehension of the scope of a decimal system of accounts. You say—" which would encumber the ledger with a useless -column of figures ' ; and a few lines further on, "C2, 5, 3, 7, he would express thus-2.5.37, and thereby get rid of the fourth column in the ledger." Now, a mathematician will tell you that the decimal system does not ne- zesitarily require any columns ; though as a matter of convenience a ledger would probably be ruled with two, as shown below, instead of three, the number now employed. The example you give, "two pounds, five florins, three cents, seven mils," would be written thus—a. 537, and called "two pounds, decimal five three seven." The pound, in fact, is the unit, and the other denominations of coin the decimal fractional parts ; the terms florins, cen,b3, and mils, not being used at all in speaking of the accounts or account- beeke, but only applied to the coins carried in the purse. Thus, you would write a banker's cheque—" Pay A. B. or bearer, sixty-three pounds .437," and in the corner below, "£63.437"; and a shopkeeper, asked the price of an article, would say, "one florin, twenty-five mils," meaning the sum now celled two shillings and sixpence. The following shows the money column of an account on the present and new system respectively ; simplicity being clearly in favour of the latter.
.Present System. Nem System.
Z. 8. d.
16 4 8 16 234 23 16 25 809 164 3 164 182 252 1 3 252 064 38 18 2 48 911 — — 507 4 507 200 Pray excuse these remarks, which are induced by the fear that the article referred to might lead some persons to the erroneous conclusion that the decimal system is more complex than that now in use.
2; .the sum of the whole will be decimals, or mils.
f 168. 101d. = 16 x 50 + 43 ± 2 = £0.845, or 845 mils.
13s. 2f cf. = 13 x 50+ 10 = a.660, or 660 mile. , (So far as we indicated an opinion of our own, it was in favour of adopting the florin as the unit of account, making it divisible into cents, and thus getting rid of two of the proposed terms in ordinary speech ; which is no small matter. This is the simplest plan we have seen ; and it would have the veep great advantage over the one recommended by the Committee,. not only 'ofssuni1ating our coinage system to those of France, Belgium, Switzerland,
numerous customers, who
are more familiar with small coins than large ones, and to whom any change will be somewhat puzzling.—En.] I am, Sir, yours faithfully, J. P. S. The following is a simple rule for converting the present into the new de- nomination of money. Multiply the shillings by 60, then turn the pence (and farthings if any) into farthings., and if above 15 added 1, above 30 add
unts of half-educated tradesmen and of their
'd, Russia, and the United States, but of greatly simplifying the small
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