Colonel Tomline has not done sticking his little silver pins
into the Chancellor of the Exchequer. Mr. Lowe, he asserts, has at last woke up to the fact that the silver currency is deficient and the silver coinage very bad. Consequently he has directed the Bank to exchange old silver coins for new, and ordered the Mint to coin silver night and day till the establishment is so fatly employed that it cannot coin gold. "This morning," writes the Member for Great Grimsby, "I saw 16,000,000 in gold ingots laid aside, that the men and the machinery of the Mint might coin silver." He asks whether all this is not evidence that his complaint of a scarcity of silver was well founded, and it will, if the facts are correctly stated, be difficult to answer" No." If Mr. Lowe desires to reduce the demand for silver swiftly and permanently, he should give the people their long-sought boon,—five-shilling gold pieces.
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