reckoning by tens--that the study of arithmetic would be immensely
facilitated, and the business of the counting-house divested of puzzling
calculations. Let us see whereabouts we are in the way towards its
attainment.

About ten years ago, a parliamentary commission on the subject of
weights and measures, advised the adoption of a decimal scale, but
recommended as a preliminary step, the decimation of the Coinage.
Regarding it as important, however, that great deference should be paid
to existing circumstances, and that the present relative notions of
value, so deeply rooted in the public mind, should be disturbed as
little as possible, they pointed out the facilities existing in our
present coinage for a re-arrangement on the decimal plan. They said that
the pound might be preserved precisely on the present footing, and thus
would be maintained in name the price of everything above twenty
shillings in value. They remarked that the farthing, which is the 960th
part of L.1, might be set down as the 1000th, which would be a variation
of 4 per cent. only--somewhat less than that to which copper is liable
from fluctuation of price. We have thus the units at the one end of the
scale, and the thousands at the other; it remains only to interpose the
tens and hundreds between them, by introducing a florin as the tenth of
a pound, and a cent--equal to 2-1/2d. nearly--as the tenth of the
florin. Adopting these views, the following would be the new and simple
scale of money-reckoning:--ten millets, 1 cent; ten cents, 1 florin; ten
florins, L.1.

Nothing was done, however, in following up these recommendations, till
the subject was brought before the House of Commons by Dr John Bowring,
in 1847. The consequence of his appeal was, that a coin denominated a
florin, and representing the tenth of a pound, was struck, and put in