The Mint appears to have discovered that there are deep-rooted
sentiments in Englishmen about different coins. The guinea and half-crown have always been popular, say the authorities of the Mint, the five-shilling piece, and florM, and fourpenny-bit vary unpopular. We can understand the unpopularity of the florM. First, it was brought in with a flourish of trumpets as a decimal coin, which prejudiced people very much against it. Common people looked at it defiantly when it first came out, apostrophized it, "So you're a decimal coin, are you? Well, then, I don't think any great things of decimal coins ?"—and, in short, felt that the world was being undermined to make way for it. Then it is intrinsically unbeautiful. It has a shabby and streaky appear- ance, and looks like a cheating half-crown. But why was the splendid five-shilling-piece unpopular, which looks like wealth in itself? Why is the fourpenny-piece unpopular, which might, one would think, have escaped unpopularity by mere insignificance? Why should the half-crown be popular and a coin twice as impressive unpopular? The half-sovereign is not so popular, we take it, as the sovereign. We wonder, if the Mint should strike a good V. 10s. gold piece, whether that would be popular. It would look opulent, —but so, in its milder form, did the crown,—and that, it is said, is so unpopular that it is coined only to send to the Falkland Isles, and is not now issued in England at all. Evidently the Falkland Isles have a sound taste in coinage, by which the British people might profit.
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