Publisher's Synopsis
Excerpt from The Decimal Coinage Question: A Letter Addressed to the Right Honourable the Chancellor of the Exchequer
It would seem that the boasted simplicity is not obtainable in the questions given. If the pound be 1etained as a denomi nation in accounts, the system is not decimal; calculations are much more difficult, and. Consequently errors more likely to arise: if the pound be not retained, then long operations have to be performed before an entry can be made, the amount appears as twenty-four-fold its present sum, and Mr. Rathbone retains only one of the existing denominations in accounts. Mr. Rathbone, however, conceives that nothing can be simpler or easier than to turn any amount in the strictly decimal or tenpenny form into that of pounds (or 24 tenpences) and ten pences; or, on the other hand, to c'onvert this latter form into that of the simple decimal tenpence. Those who have a mono mania for practising an arithmetic whose basis is 24, no doubt acquire great facility in their calculations. But such facility and simplicity the English nation would rather be without. Is it simpler and easier to divide by 24 than by 12 or 20 Is it simpler and easier to multiply by 24 than by 12 or 20? Any schoolboy would say, that division by 24 is as difficult as division first'by 12 and then by 20; and that multiplication is not more easily performed by 24 than by 20 and then by 12.
The next comparison relates solely to the manner of account keeping. It 13 this -that the pound scheme doubles the second and name than doubles the thi1d denomination in accounts, consequently requiring a fourth denomination to be used, while the tenpenny scheme simply and solely reduces the amount of the second coin of account an exact one-sixth; from which circumstance Mr. Rathbone argues, that the tenpenny scheme does not necessitate any change whatever in the present manner of keeping accounts. The first point I would beg you to notice in this is, that, unless the pound be retained, the change proposed by the advocates of the tenpenny scheme causes a complete and entire change in the mode of keepingaccounts; and that, under this scheme, the pound cannot be retained, and at the same time the desired decim ality be obtained. But let it be supposed that the pound should be retained, in spite of the much greater inconvenience it would produce than now exists: it can still be asserted, that the ratio of 2 1 is a much simpler relation than that of 5 6, and the pound scheme has still the advantage in.this comparison. I admit, that the benefit to be derived from the third and fourth denominations in accounts under the pound scheme, is solely contained in that scheme's being a perfectly decimal one but even then it entails a greater degree of accuracy in accounts than at present exists, and this circumstance can surely be no objection to it. Let the tenpenny scheme be deprived of the pound denomination in accounts, which to render it decimal it must be, and then no doubt can possibly remain that it introduces a much more entire change in the manneii of keeping accounts than the Millesimal Scheme, a term' applied by Mr. Rathbone to the Committee's scheme, but a term which does not correctly define it. The Times newspaper and Mr. Rathbone agree decidedly as to the tenpenny. And penny scheme being a most useful, eficient introduction to a decimal system. It is clear, however, that the system proposed to be thus introduced is not a decimal system and, if it were, why have a mere introductic'm, when the system itself can be so easily obtained? The scheme which is spoken of as an introduction, is proposed by Mr. Rathbone, to be legalized by the exchange of the present non-decimaltwelve-pence, or shilling, for a decimal tenpence.
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