your question.’  This, however, we cannot help considering one of the greatest inconveniences of transatlantic and continental reckonings.  We are accustomed to talk of amounts in as small numbers as possible; and one of the great advantages we see in decimal gradations is, that we should never have a number above 9, except in pounds.  There is something not only troublesome but indefinite, in the idea of ten and twenty in comparison with one and two; and a French account in francs bewilders us when it amounts to thousands and millions.  Probably the half and quarter francs of France, and the half and quarter dollars of America, have been the means of exploding the decimals next below them; and on this ground we differ from those who plead for the continuance of our present shillings and sixpences, as half and quarter florins.  The shilling is a coin so inseparably connected with 12 and 20, that no decimal system will obtain while it exists.  It is useless to say, that it would be retained only as a circulation coin, and not as a denomination in accounts; for so long as we have it at all, we will certainly reckon from it and by it.  For purposes of common barter, there ought to be a two-cent piece, a four-cent, and perhaps a seven-cent; and thus we shall be compelled to think decimally.  ‘If it is worth while to alter at all,’ says Mr Taylor, ’ought we not to go the whole required length, and aim without timidity at the possession of a scale complete at once within itself, and so escape an indefinite prolongation of the purgatory of transition?  In a change like the one under consideration, the work of pulling down an old system is far more difficult than that of building up another, and every prop must be removed before it will fall.’

With respect to the copper coins, there seems to be no hurry about disturbing them.  It appears that the Dutch stiver and the French sou have maintained their place in spite of legislation.  So, probably, would the English penny, and properly enough as a 4-millet piece.  We fear our poor people would feel it to be an attempt to mystify them, were the government to withdraw this familiar coin and substitute a 5-millet piece, as some have recommended, for the sake of establishing a binary division of the cent.  It would, doubtless, be considered desirable, as an ulterior measure, to have a more exact copper coinage, marked as one millet, two millets, and four millets; but when we have, without scruple, passed as the twelfth part of a shilling the Irish penny, which is really only the thirteenth part, we may, in the meantime, use our present copper money, which will differ only a twenty-fifth from the new value attached to it—­a discrepancy of no consequence, except to the holders of large quantities, from whom the Mint would be bound to receive it back at the value it bore when issued.  These coppers, however, ought not to be used beyond the value of the cent, for then would arise the confusion of dealing with the 100 millets in the florin, or