(To rut EDITOR or vac " SPECTATOR."' SIR,-1 read with
interest your article on "A Decimal Coinage for the Empire" and relative letters from correspondents. I have taken a keen interest in the subject for many years, and am satisfied from long experience that the adoption of decimal currency would greatly assist the expansion of our foreign trade, and all the more so if metric weights and measures were adopted, as they could not but be shortly after. With regard to the unit of value, there is much to be said in favour of the dollar, espe- cially in view of closer relationships with America, but personally I would greatly prefer to see the pound sterling retained. The mental pictures of value which it conjures up both in literature and statistics would be lost for many years were the dollar adopted. Other units, in my opinion, are nowhere. As for the coins themselves, I hope that not only the ten-mil piece but also the four-mil and two-mil pieces would be of nickel, and only the one-mil piece of bronze. The standard objection to the four-mil piece or penny being of nickel is its similarity to a silver six- pence, but I have pointed out to successive Chancellors of the Exchequer that the adoption of the Indian anna or penisy, and half-anna or halfpenny, would get rid once and for all of this objection, besides introducing into our coinage a very beautiful form. The anna is polygonal with the corners rounded off, and
cannot possibly be mistaken for any other coin, even in the dark.
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