THE FLORIN versus THE HALF-CROWN.
MR. GLADSTONE has asked the Bankers, and through them the public, whether they would rather retain the Half- crows or the Florin, as it is impossible, if we keep the half-crown, not to renew it, and useless, if florins are to be maintained to undertake a costly renewal. One or other of them must super- sede its rival, and the Master of the Mint would like to know what the public feeling is upon the subject before he decides. He has, strictly speaking, no business to ask any such question, it being his province to decide, and afterwards take a Parliamentary verdict on his action ; but as he has asked the public, we only wish there were means of taking its opinion by a plebiscite, or other formal operation. The result would be the most perfect illustration of the way that system of voting acts—when the heart of the nation is not deeply stirred—that it is possible to conceive. Every- body would have an opinion, and think he had overwhelming reason for his opinion, and trouble himself to vote for his opinion ; and there would be a majority of millions in favour of a demonstrably wrong course. Everybody, and especially everybody who receives instead of giving gratuities, would be for the half-crown. It is the older coin, and its rival is to this day disliked as a mean upstart, devised by some unknown interest to Germanise British coinage. It is also the fee-coin. If you give more than a shilling, you give a half-crown, just as naturally as if you give more to a subscription list than two guineas, you give a five-pound note, or if you exceed that sum, you give £.10. There is no reason for any each habit of refusing to split money that we know of, but there is such a habit, and the habit existing, giver and receiver are quite put out by a departure from it. Three shillings would be more liberal, and two shillings and a sixpence quite as much so, but they are not a coin, and accordingly, in the absence of half-crowns, you give a florin, and think yourself mean, and are thought mean for the next twelve hours. Then the half-crown has the charm of habit even in paying a bill, seeming to go so much more than sixpence farther than the florin,—an impression due, we ima- gine, entirely to numbers, eight half-crowns making a pound, while it takes ten florMs to make up the same sum. Then the half-crown, when be was last seen in his beauty—about twenty-five years ago—was a very handsome coin, with the royal arms on the reverse and the Queen's head well raised on the obverse, and all the letters Roman, and the edge not too high, and all manner of msthetic pleasantnesses,—and is even now a smooth, large, heavy piece of silver, disagreeable only because it does so tempt
the coiners. All muthetic grace is wanting to the florin, with its mean size, and hard, military look, with its Ger- man name and its nickel colour, and undistinguishable obverse, and raspy edge, and stupid Old - English lettering, care- fully devised so that the poor should not read the instruc- tive but entirely useless information that it is one-tenth of a pound. Arithmetic is the strong point of the masses even when not educated, and they are as little likely to give more than ten florins for a sovereign, as they are to give more than twelve pennies for a shilling, or to receive them either. As a coin, there is nothing to be said for the florin, except that it is as ugly as it could be made,—specially and wonderfully ugly, for there must be intention in the chemical art employed to produce its tint, which is quite unnatural in silver, and suggests that a dose of nickel—ugliest of metals i—has been introduced to make the coin look sick. We do trust Mr. Gladstone, before he issues new florins, will consult Mr. Wyou, and think over a scroll, and give us a coin of which we need not be utterly ashamed, and try whether there is no short name which can express to English minds, and in English, "A tenth of a pound."
For, all prejudices notwithstanding, the ugly little coin ought to win the fight. In it rests the only chance we shall ever have of obtaining a decimal coinage, and getting rid for ever of that abominable result of history and muddle called "compound arithmetic," which actually doubles or trebles the labour of every national schoolmaster and national schoolboy in the kingdom. With our huge National Debt, and our heavy-pated people, the pound will never be altered, and we must accept it as the unit of account, and make life a little happier by dividing it into tenths. That was the original idea at the bottom of the innovation when theflorin was introduced, and we ought to go a step forward towards its perfection, and not a step backwards from civilisation. The florin is the tenth of a pound, and if the Master of the Mint would recall that ridiculous threepence, and that fourpenny bit so dear to minute swindlers, and substitute for both a "silver penny," equal to a tenth of two shillings, which in a week would be called a " silpenny," we should have a decimal coinage ready- made. The new farthing, silpenny, florin, and sovereign would constitute a decimal coinage to our hands, and would, with two years' notice, be completely understood by the population as moneyof account, while the needful change in coinage would be very small, and might be let almost alone. The sixpence would have to be called a quarter, and we should want a five new-farthing coin, issued under the old name of a penny or the new name of a Five, and we should be quite set up, with these two incidental advantages. The readjustment necessary to the buyer to enable him to give 1,000 farthings for a pound, instead of 960, would be very easy, because confined to transactions under a florin ; while one, at least, of the most powerful interests in the country would see its way out of a scrape that every now and then threatens its existence. The penny newspaper is almost the only thing sold which has to be snatched in a moment, and must therefore be paid for in a single and handy coin. No other coin exists close to the penny, and a penny, therefore, it must be ; but in spite of the great fortunes made out of penny papers, they are always in danger from the fluctuations in the price of printing material, and always—or with rare and unintelligible exceptions —ill-printed, from the badness of the paper they are compelled to use. The "five" new-farthing bit, or penny, or half-silpenny, or whatever the name of the coin might be, would just set them above bad paper without annoying the public, and just give com- petition that chance which it is imperative it should have, if English papers are not to become a monopoly in very few hands. There would be annoyance at first, no doubt, but if time were granted, we do not believe people would be irritated, or that Mr. Gladstone would grow old, like Plantagenet Palliser, of overwork about the decimal farthing. He could as a beginning at all events reissue the florin, and adding the silver penny, leave everything else to adjust itself.
We are often told that the change we have suggested would destroy or at least imperil the Mint revenue, which is chiefly derived from the circulation of pennies. They are worth barely half their value, and contain four farthings, which, from their number and neat execution, are comparatively espensive coins to make ; but surely that objection is of very little force. Why should not the profit taken out of two pennies be taken out of the silver penny ? It is not needed to be anything but a token, or to be worth any more intrinsically than the sum necessary to make forgery comparatively profitless, except upon an enormous scale. Indeed, the greater the amount of alloy within the limit of safety, the better would be the coin, for though great size in a coin is a nuisance—as witness the dislike for the crown-piece—unusual smallness is a nuisance too, and the threepence is a little too small for safety in carriage. The silver penny should be as large as a farthing, but composed of some mixed metal different in colour alike from copper and from silver, or merely of bronze, with some peculiarity in the design so violently distinct from the usual one that it could never even in the dark be mistaken for it, a feat which Mr. Wyon could, if we mistake not, very easily accom-
plish. No one could mistake a a small deeply-cut bronze medal the size of a penny for a penny, while it is quite possible to issue a handsome coin with the obverse totally blank. These, however, are matters to be settled by experts, the only objects of the public being that the florin should be retained, and the silver penny introduced.
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