A DECIMAL COINAGE FOR THE EMPIRE. [To ens Ennui or
THE "Srecraroa."]
• am writing from a bookseller's point of view. The letter from Me. Andrew Law in a recent lassie of your paper seems to me to advocate the most suitable and simplest plan for changing our present money into decimals, the halfpenny—culled a nickel—being the lowest denomination, and 4s. Id...-100 nickels, to be called a crown, or by any more suitable name, being the standard coin in place of the sovereign, and these would be the only names required, for the lower coins would he the half-nickel, one-, two- and five- nickel pieces; then 0.10, 0.25, 0.50, and 1.00 in silver, taking the place of the present ones ranging from 6d. to 4s.; the half- sovereign would be 2.50 and the sovereign 5.00 gold coins. My objection to the bankers' proposal of 1,000 mile to the sovereign is that the pricing of goods in retail businesses such as mine would he rather difficult; 1.50 for a 6s. book would be much more simple than 0.290 (about), and I am sure the general public would prefer the former, for the major portion of the population uses some of smaller value, and the lower unit of the crown would be better
u nderstood as well as being more convenient for them than decimals of the pound. The present farthing might be retained as the half-nickel and be of bronze; the next three nickel with the *Id design of Britannia of 1860 to 1870, with the lighthouse, Ac.; the silver with the standing figure of Britannia used on the florin at 1903; the gold as at present. It seems to me that in making the change to decimals the retail customer ie the man who has to be Oddly considered, and not the financier and banker, who form a entail minority. There can be no doubt that now js the time for making the change, for nothing is the same value as. it was even e x months ago, and there is every appearance of further advances in prices, so that the increase of four per cent., or tenpence, in the
value of the sovereign would hardly .be noticed by the average retail purchaser; it would mean that the public would pay cr. 5.00, or Its. 1011., for a 205. article. —I am, Sir, de., W. R. M.
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