Mr. Lowe is going to give us the old St.
George and the Dragon on the sovereigns again. We suppose the idea is to use up the old dies, but it would not be very expensive to give us a new sovereign, bearing a device with a meaning, the obverse, for example, being the Queen as she is now. Coins should preserve portraits of the Sovereigns who struck them, and be altered every five years. The reverse should be the war-ship of the period, to-day, for instance, the Monarch, and five years hence, let us sup- pose, the Thunderbolt, a rain going, say, 70 miles an hour. The device on the coinage would then have a historic value, while that pork-butcher in boiler plates who is- killing:the antedeluvian has no meaning at all. How many people in England know anything about St. George, or attach any meaning to his leffigy, while they would attach a very definite meaning to a representation of the best new ship in their fleet. While he is about it, Mr. Lowe might give us the gold coin we really want, the five-shifting- piece, to be used merely as a token, and be worth exactly the same in metal as five silver shillings. That would be the real boon, which the effigy of St. George is not.
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