In the course of his speech of Tuesday on the
Liquor Laws, Lord Randolph Churchill made an interesting remark on an English social difficulty, the trouble workmen, and their superiors too, have in quickly obtaining change. The better classes obtain it from their butchers, but the workmen all go to the public-houses, and, of course, are expected to be customers. Lord Randolph suggested that the cure for this evil would be to abolish the half-sovereign, and so compel the payment of wages in silver; but there ought to be better plans than this, which would not help the better-paid wage-receivers at all. We have never been able to understand why change should not be sold in England, as it is in the East, the agio demanded being, say, a penny in the pound. As the banks will supply silver in any quantity without charge, we should have thought that selling change would pay the smaller tradesmen, or even the post-offices, very well, and the accom- modation to the well-to-do, as well as the workmen, would be a great one. The worry in some places about change is endless, and to the poor, the loss by the agio would be much less than the loss by the drink which they take, not because they want it, but as payment for the publican's obligingness. Mr. Goschen has got rid, to the great profit of the Treasury, of the scarcity of silver which has for a whole generation past tormented country towns ; but the method of distributing silver coin is still absurdly imperfect.
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