Dublin was surprised on Tuesday when the Minister of Finance
in the Dail produced a Bill authorizing a new • silver, nickel and bronze coinage. The corres- pondent of the Times says that the new issue will be purely a token coinage and that there need be no appreci- able -economic effects. Business men, however, express anxiety and think that the Government would have done better to confine its experiment to nickel and bronze. The new coinage is, of course, sentimental, but it is felt that the purposes of sentiment would have been served without interfering with silver. We hope that the Free State Government will be as discreet as possible. The coinage is a dangerous thing to play with. It would be bad for Ireland if there should ever be , a separation between. the Free State and British .currency systems. Separate currencies would mean that there would have to be a rate of exchange, and in the present state of Irish trade the rate would at once go against the Free State.
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