The Press. — London, England, 1853-08-27 00:00:00

M F de MelteAs calculates) to the extent of four fifths of the total labour now performed in that department of business. Next (and to the masses this is the more important con• sideration), accounts will be so fur simplified as to make them easily intelligilik by the most ignorant class of purchasers , vhf from want of skill in figures, are at preselibtbso lutely at the mercy of village tradesmen. 'ln the public offices, a large reduction of work, and, consequently, of expenditure, will ensue ; and a similar benefit will bo shared by almost every merchant and even every tradesman in large business. The committee remark with truth that no single instance has yet been known in which a decimal notation having once been intro duced into the coinage of any country has been subsequently discontinued. In the vast empire of China that mode of reckoning has long been in use ; and Portugal, having adopted it some years ago, is now applying a similar reform to the weights and measures of the country. But we may look for precedents nearer home. At the Mint, and at the Bank of England, the sale and purchase of bullion are already carried on according to the deci mal scale ; and this, although the adoption of that notation, while our coinage remains un altered, implies on the part of those who use it a double expenditure of time and trouble in transferring their calculations from the old to the new scale, and vice versa. Yet the practice prevails, and is legalised by a recent act of Parliament. In truth, the question practically at issue is, not whether the reform shall be made, but how ? The two most important coins in our table are the penny and the pound. It is clear that both of these cannot be retained unaltered, the one being Thth part of the other. In choosing a unit of value as the basis of the new system, one or other must be discarded. Much might be said, doubtless, on both sides. The pound is, say the com mittee, " the present standard of value, and " the basis on which our exchange transae " thins with the whole world rest." It is interwoven with our social and political ideas. We talk of a debt of eight hundred millions, of a revenue of fifty millions, of a man of ten thousand a year. It would not be easy, if it were desirable, to teach men a new language and familiarise them with an un accustomed standard of value. On the other hand, the penny is in a great degree to the poor man what the pound is to the rich. A change in its value will be felt temporarily, perhaps for some time, as an inconvenience. The one evil might fairly be set against the other. But there are distinct and separate considerations which seem to turn the nicely poised scale. If you alter the penny by a very slight amount (from ,l a th to g hth of the pound) you have a decimal system ready framed to your hands. If you alter the pound, leaving the penny untouched, a corre spending change becomes necessary in every other denomination of coin. The difference, both of actual cost and of trouble, is immense. For this cause we think the oommittee have done wisely in recommending the retention of the pound sterling as a basis of future value. The only practical difficulty that occurs (beyond that vague though formidable preju dice which any inuovatien on popular habits has to encounter) arises out of the number of public and private taxes now fixed at one penny—e.g., the newspaper stamp, the postage stamp, the receipt stamp, railway fares, and tolls of various descriptions. These obstacles, however, are more formidable in appearance than in reality. The postage may be reduced by the fraction of T i g th to meet the altered _ of no more than are compant never bought quantities. The stamp would cause Railway and toll follows :—The limited term to of coin (an in on Condition of of the term so THE PRESS. temporary, but present, gain balancing the future and permanent loss. The rest of their project shall be told by the committee in their own words : As respects the coins, it will be necessa►y to withdraw from circulation certaia of the coins at present in use, and to substitute in their piece certain other coins, having re ference to the decimal scale, before the decimal system can be considered as fully developed. Your committee con• template the retention, under any circumstances, of the present sovereign (1,000 mils), half sovereign (51)0 mils), (11$) mils), and shilling (50 mils, or five cents). The present sitpence, under the denomination of 25 mils, might be retained, and the crown, or piece of 250 mils, of which few are in circulation, need not be withdrawn. On the other hand, it will be desirable to withdraw the half crown, and the threepenny and fourpenny pieces, which are inconsistent with the decimal scale. . With regard to the coins not in actual existence at pre sent, hut which it will be necessary eventually to introduce, your committee refer to the evidence taken by them on the subject. It appears to them that copper coins of one, two, and five mils, and silver coins of twenty and ten mils, will be required, to which should be added such others as expe rience may show to be desirable. It is important, how ever, to bear in mind that the smaller the number of the coins with which it is possible to effect purchases and ex changes the better. Your committee feel that a certain period of preparation, destined to facilitate the transition from the present to the new system, is unavoidable. During such a transition period, various measures should be adopted with a view to prepare the way for ulterior changes, and to create in the public mind a desire for their completion. Several of the pro ceedings on the part of her Majesty's Mint which would ultimately become necessary might be adopted at the pre. sent time without introducing any elements inconsistent with the existing system of coinage and accounts. They believe that no unnecessary delay should prevent the full introduction of the decimal system, and they recommend that the necessary preparatory measures should be entered on at the Royal Mint as soon as possible. - - We earnestly hope that no time will be lost by the Executive in comply ins with the re commendations of the committ ee. e Mr. CARD WELL may be neither a financier nor a states man, but he is fully competent to carry through a change of this kind, supported as he will be by all parties in Parliament, and sure of the assent of all reasoning and calculating nieu. .. __ value of the penny, at a loss of 100,0001. Newspaper stamps tivel unaffected, as these are 1 . 1 i ."; ,iii., .. t always i n large qu ot.: l ` ' k. , ,,_ f the receipt stamp . - 4Z . '' fl" idemble loss. Ra ( -77 s'. .+a ' ' . -. q. be dealtwith.as ~„ cll. .. r-' ' - . • , !.1 1,r be raised fov.a lii 1 - I.s I.:: gi •• .. .. , 4 1-st denomination I -•.. • l '; " ess than ith), on lii i , at the expiration `').*'": ' - fhpf adOext lowest dem szl. . • 1. 1 .. • • THE " MAN FOR GALWAY." THE Lord Chief Justice has been enjoying an agreeable episode to the dull routine of his dry judicial duties. By some process or other —which, in charity, we will assume not to have been voluntary—Lord CAMPBELL has be come the possessor of property in Galway. If one is surprised at the apparition of the Lord Chief Justice of England in the capacity of a landlord in a district where but a few years since a writ could not have been served on one of the lords of the soil, that surprise will not extend to the Noble and Learned Lord's • naïve announcement some time since in the House of Lords, that from the property in question he has never received one shilling of rent. Whether to satisfy his judicial mind of the causes of this very common event, or to lead to a better balance-sheet in future, Lord CAMPBELL has within these few days paid a visit to the scene of his unprofitable pro prietorship, and held personal communion with his unresponding tenantry. There is something dramatic, and even pathetic, in the manner of the visit. As if he were pro ceeding on some desperate pilgrimage, Lord CAMPBELL fortified himself with his household gods. The patriarchal cortege comprised, be sides himself, his son, his daughter, and his legal agent. It seems as if the Learned Lord had so far studied the Irish character as to know, that in the peril he was about to brave it was best to throw himself in this domestic guise upon their sympathy, and trust to the loyal instincts of impulsive natures for protec tion against the traditionary dangers of a land lord's visit—that landlord a Seotehman, and the embodied spirit of the laws. In this Lord CAMPBELL, as the result shows. has proved himself to have understood the difficulty. His tenantry, with a lively sense of arrears and prospective remissions, received him with enthusiastic acclamations ; and the Roman Catholic priest of the place took the lead in set ting forth the virtues of the functionary who gave the tone to the RUSSELL agitation against Cardinal WisEmAN's aggression." We notice this visit chiefly for the purpose of praising SATURDAY, the very sensible and well-timed speech made by Lord CAMPBELL, on the occasion of a grand banquet given on Monday to the tenantry of his Nloycullen estate. Introduced by the Rev. Mr. KENNY, " P.P.," with sympathetic eulogy, Lord CAMPBELL unfolded his own view of his future duties, and at the same time provided a model for imitation by those Irish landlords who may wish to promote harmony between themselves and their tenants. Lord CAMPBELL frankly confesses that he prefers, like all sound agriculturists, large farms to petty holdings, and that he thinks good wages, re gularly paid, are better for the peasantry than poverty on a potato-patch. But he recognises in the common sympathies of humanity some thing superior to the most logical deductions of political economy or agricultural science ; and he therefore proclaims that he will never seek the desired end by means of evictions ; of course provided (and here the Scotchman and the Judge come out in strong relief)—of course provided the said not-to-be-evicted tenants pay their rent, a practice with which they are inno cently unfamiliar. It is something, however, to have arrived at a middle point between mer ciless systematising and the hopeless unpro. ductiveness of the Irish cottier system; and Lord CAMPBELL will have done good service to society in Ireland in thus enforcing a valuable example by his high authority. It is worthy of special praise that neither the enthusiastic blau, icy of the parish priest, nor the hurricane cheering of the grateful tenantry, could disturb the magnet of this judicial mind from point ing to the pole of truth. Reminding them of their steadfastness to their faith, he also pro. claimed his firm adherence to his own. A warm advocate, in times gone by, of Catholic emancipation, he was now equally a stern opponent of ultramontanism ; but he appealed to his own belief in the liberality and tolerance of the Roman Catholic laity, as his warrant for hoping that Protestant and Roman Catholic might live together in amity, priestly assump tion and intolerance notwithstanding. It is cheering to find a man holding so high a moral and social position thus standing forth at once as a mediator and as a champion; and that in a double character so new to the dis trict he should have been received with so much hearty enthusiasm. Unless the normal state of repulsion succeeds the withdrawal of the temporary attraction, Lord CAMPBELL will indeed have proved himself the " Man for " Galway." THE TRANSMARINE POSTAL SERVICE. A P 4 X paper, made public within the last few weeks, contains an important, and to many persons interesting, investigation into the subject of the transmarine postal service, or, in other words, the contract packet ser vice—a branch of administration of which the magnitude may be estimated by this single fact, that it absorbs 850,000/. of the revenue yearly, and employs some hundred vessels, many of which exceed in magnitude the com mon run of line-of battle ships. - - - - Two methods only exist by which the postal communications of the country can be carried on beyond seas :-1. By vessels of war em ployed as packets. 2. By vessels under con tract to perform that service. Both these systems exist, but the latter is preferred, and has gradually superseded the other almost to its exclusion. Contracts of this nature may be either tem porary, or for a long term of years. In ordi nary cases the first alternative is preferable, as it allows Government to profit by any casual reduction in the expenses of freight; but where a new class of vessels had to be created (and such were the ocean steamers), for the performance of a new duty. it became evident that an engagement of longer duration was requisite, in order to compensate the parties for the expense to which they were put in the first instance. It is, therefore, by the direct agency of Go vernment, and through the help of subsidies largely granted, that the extraordinary speed, certainty, and safety of trans-oceanic commu nication which now exists has been brought