DECIMAL SYSTEM OF COINAGE.


The pounds, shillings, and pence which served for the simple reckonings
of our fathers, have entailed upon us a highly complicated system of
accounts since we have become a great commercial people. Steam-engines,
locomotives, and electric telegraphs have multiplied our transactions a
hundredfold, but no adequate labour-saving machinery has been introduced
into the counting-house, where the value of these transactions has to be
recorded and adjusted. The simple and scientific method of computation
by what is called the decimal system, is used at this moment, we are
told, by more than half the human race. Not only has it been by law
established in most of the countries of Europe, but throughout the great
empires of China and Russia; it is penetrating the Ottoman Empire; it
has obtained a footing in Persia and Egypt; and it is universal in the
United States of America, whence it has made its way into several other
transatlantic states. Among ourselves, the thing is approved and admired
in the abstract, but we dread the trouble it would give us to fall into
a method to which we are unaccustomed; and we apprehend, on very
insufficient grounds, that much confusion would arise during the
transition. Moreover, it is to be feared that out of a spirit of
prejudice or contradiction, many would not, even under the penalties of
law, adopt the change. At this moment, as is well known, certain classes
of people persist in selling corn and other articles by old local
measures, although at the risk of prosecution. Thus, in Scotland, we
still hear of firlots, bolls, and mutchkins, notwithstanding that these
antiquated measures were abolished upwards of twenty years ago. In
short, it would appear that the change of popular denominations in
weights, measures, and moneys, is one of the things which the law, in