they might write it as 2s. Id. in their accounts, with £ s. d. as at present. The main difference would be that they would write the new principal coin, the universal, as we might call it, £1 Os. Iod. Any one could learn it in a day, however ignorant and however stupid.

Again, no matter which of our coins were kept, it could be written at once in the new coinage. They are all multiples of the farthing, and whatever is a multiple of the farthing can at once go down on paper in the new currency.

The rules of reduction between the old and new systems of account would be the simplest possible. To turn the old currency into the new, the rule would be-Convert the sum given into farthings, put the decimal point before the third place from the right, and the result is the sum in the new currency—thus, £185 9s. 4 d.

£ S. d. 185 9 4

20

3.709

12

44.512
4

178.051

one figure less to write than our present currency. To change the new currency into the old the rule would be-" Treat the entire sum as farthings, and divide by 4, 12, and 20, as usual ". To change 97.311 of new currency, we should only proceed4)97.311 12)24327

again, more figures to write than the new currency.

The new unit is so near the value of the old sovereign that it is impossible to say whether it is better or worse as a unit;

and the trouble of adding 10d. to every pound in old accounts is not very arduous, besides that it would be facilitated by handy tables.

The Americans would have just the same facilities at the change, subject to the minute change to bring the value of the dollar to the Congress value of 4s. 2d. All their coinstheir half-eagle, their dollar, their cent-would be exactly expressible in the new coinage. Their half-eagle-their 5-dollar -would be the unit. They could keep their books as now, and they could reckon as now, if they liked, and they could change at once, and on the instant adopt the new plan if they thought that more pleasant. Each American could judge for

himself.

The real objection is that after all this plan does not combine; it leaves us with two moneys; but if all the nations of the world gradually joined either the Latin coinage league or the Teutonic coinage league, trade would be very easy; and the amalgamation of these two might be left to a future and more educated age.

NOTE ON SEIGNORAGE.

I still think the ingenious scheme proposed by Colonel Smith far too difficult of comprehension to be adopted by Parliament, or explained to the country, but I am bound to say that I recant a refined objection which I before made to it. In the Economist I remarked:-"It is evident, as Sir John Lubbock well put it, that the new sovereign could not be equal in value both to the existing pound sterling and to 25 francs of the present French currency; if by the imposition of a mintage it is made equal to the former no advantage will be effected, while if it is reduced to the latter, the necessity for compensation will arise".

But Colonel Smith does not propose that the new sovereign should be exactly 25 francs of present French currency. He proposes that it should be identical with 25 francs of a new French currency, which is to circulate through all the countries joining the Monetary Union, and be identical in all those

countries. When it is objected that the French will object to change their currency, he answers that the change will be microscopic. The French now charge a very considerable seignorage in one way or another, and the plan is, that they should charge a minute fraction more in a prescribed way.

It is often argued that, as there are 113 grains of gold in the present sovereign, and only 112 grains in twenty-five present francs, therefore their "value" differs by is of a sovereign; and this is quite true, if the two are exported to a distant country, say Japan. There French or English coins pass only in proportion to the bullion contained in them. But while an English coin remains in England it passes not as so much bullion, but as so much bullion plus so much Government charge. A charge for making sovereigns is just like a charge for making gold plate. If goldsmiths chose to make plate for nothing, plate would be cheaper; in a little while goldsmiths would be ruined, but, as long as they stood, they could give the public a cheap article. A Government is just the same, only it is never ruined, because it makes the taxpayer pay more. Accordingly, a coin may continue for ever to buy no more than the bullion contained in it would buy. The Government being a subsidised producer may work at a loss or for nothing. Such is the case of the English Government now, which charges nothing.

But, on the other hand, if, like the present French Government, it choose to charge a seignorage, this will operate in France like the goldsmith's charge for making plate-it will raise the price of the article in France. Accordingly, the present sovereign and the present 25 francs do not differ in buying power by near of a sovereign. The sovereign purchases a certain quantity of various articles, because it has so much bullion; 25 francs buy nearly as much, though they have less bullion, because the coining of them costs something too.

But all this discussion is too fine for the mass of men. If the Commissioners could not follow it, how will the House of Commons follow it?

HENRY CRABB ROBINSON.1

(1869.)

PERHAPS I should be ashamed to confess it, but I own I opened the three large volumes of Mr. Robinson's memoirs with much anxiety. Their bulk, in the first place, appalled me; but that was by no means my greatest apprehension. I knew I had a hundred times heard Mr. Robinson say that he hoped something he would leave behind would "be published and be worth publishing". I was aware too—for it was no deep secret—that for half a century or more he had kept a diary, and that he had been preserving correspondence besides; and I was dubious what sort of things these would be, and what—to use Carlyle's words-any human editor could make of them. Even when Mr. Robinson used to talk so, I used to shudder; for the men who have tried to be memoir-writers and failed, are as numerous, or nearly so, as those who have tried to be poets and failed. A specific talent is as necessary for the one as for the other. But as soon as I had read a little of the volumes, all these doubts passed away. I saw at once that Mr. Robinson had an excellent power of narrative-writing, and that the editor of his remains had made a most judicious use of excellent materials.

Perhaps more than anything it was the modesty of my old friend (I think I may call Mr. Robinson my old friend, for though he thought me a modern youth, I did know him twenty years)—perhaps, I say, it was his modesty which made me nervous about his memoirs more than anything else. I have so often heard him say (and say it with a vigour of emphasis which is rarer in our generation even than in his),-"Sir, I have

1

1 Diary, Reminiscences, and Correspondence of Henry Crabb Robinson, Barrister-at-Law, F.S.A. Selected and Edited by Thomas Sadler, Ph.D. In Three Volumes. London, 1869.

VOL. V.

49

4

no literary talent. I cannot write. I never could write anything, and I never would write anything," that being so taught, and so vehemently, I came to believe. And there was

this to justify my creed. The notes Mr. Robinson used to scatter about him-and he was fond of writing rather elaborate ones-were not always very good. At least they were too long for the busy race of the present generation, and introduced Schiller and Goethe where they need not have appeared. But in these memoirs (especially in the Reminiscences and the Diary; for the moment he gets to a letter the style is worse) the words flow with such an effectual simplicity, that even Southey, the great master of such prose, could hardly have written better. Possibly it was his real interest in his old stories which preserved Mr. Robinson; in his letters he was not so interested and he fell into words and amplifications ; but in those ancient anecdotes, which for years were his life and being, the style, as it seems to me, could scarcely be mended even in a word. And though, undoubtedly, the book is much too long in the latter half, I do not blame Dr. Sadler, the editor and biographer, for it, or indeed blame any one. Mr. Robinson had led a very long and very varied life, and some of his old friends had an interest in one part of his reminiscences and some in another. An unhappy editor entrusted with "a deceased's papers " cannot really and in practice omit much that any surviving friends much want to have put in. One man calls with a letter " in which my dear and honoured friend gave me advice that was of such inestimable value, I hope, I cannot but think, you will find room for it". And another calls with memoranda of a dinner-a most "superior occasion," as they say in the North-at which, he reports, "there was conversation to which I never, or scarcely ever, heard anything equal. There were A. B. and C. D. and E. F., all masters, as you remember, of the purest conversational eloquence; surely I need not hesitate to believe that you will say something of that dinner." And so an oppressed biographer has to serve up the crumbs of ancient feasts, though well knowing in his heart that they are crumbs, and though he feels, too, that the critics will attack him, and cruelly say it is his fault. But remember