Even large sums of money are always
mentioned as well as written in francs. In
such cases, you have the inconvenience of
noting down long lines of figures. But there
is something superb and grandiose in the
custom, when you come to apply it to your
private aifairs. It sounds pleasantly, and
rings in the ear like a peal of bells, to say
that your income is so many thousands (of
francs) a-year. You begin to consider
philosophically whether people who have as many
thousands sterling, enjoy life more in the
same proportion — namely, twenty-five times
as much as yourself. I remember the look of
wishfulness and disappointment which
overspread a young Frenchman's face, when I
said to him, "If you could only speak English,
I could at once get you a place of twelve
hundred francs a-year, with almost sure
increase by-and-by." A millionnaire, in
France, is the fortunate possessor of a million
of francs — a nice little sum, take it as you
will, and more within the reach of possibility
to amass than a million of pounds sterling.
These colossal French fortunes are easily
reduced to more modest proportions by the
consideration that twenty-five francs make a
pound, barring the fractional fluctuations of
more or less, which depend on the
ever-changing rate of exchange. Divide by
twenty-five by mental arithmetic, and a
hundred francs sinks to four pounds, a thou-
sand francs to forty pounds. Cinderella's gilt
carriage is reconverted to a humble pumpkin,
and her fine laced footmen to full-grown rats.
Preferable, however, is the pumpkin to the
carriage, if we can thereby learn economy
and content. I do think that the French,
as a nation, have more nearly attained to
this conclusion than the English have. Can
decimal money have had anything to do
with it ?

The centime, or tenth-part of a penny,
being acknowledged as legitimate by law and
custom, must of course have a copper
representative. "Of what use is so small a coin?"
it may be asked. " What can you buy with
it ? What could we do with anything of the
kind in England?" To the first questions, I
answer that, in the south of France and in
Italy (where there are also centesimi) you
can buy with it something — a few figs, nuts,
plums, or hot roast chesnuts, or a cooling
draught. To the last query, I reply that a
very small coin, if it occupied its place in a
decimal coinage, would be found to play its part
in Great Britain and Ireland. County rates are
often assessed in fractious, say three-eighths,
of a penny in the pound. Here at once is an
instance in which much plaguy calculation
would be avoided. Again, it would be useful,
as furnishing an easy mode of registration,
and also for maintaining established rights,
by the payment, as it were, of a pepper-corn
rent. For example, over the Seine at Rouen
there hangs a handsome suspension-bridge.
The passage is not free, but as nearly so as
possible. I took a lady and a little girl over
that bridge ; and, laying down a sou to pay
the toll, received out of it the change of two
centimes. The charge was only a centime
per head ; and the little girl made me cross
the bridge two or three times afterwards,
solely for the fun of getting change out of
a sou. It was infinitely more amusing, in
her opinion, than an hour's study of the
pence table. It struck me that it could
hardly be for profit's sake that so low a
toll was charged, but to preserve some right
of the builders of the bridge, or to ascertain
how many people went over it every
day. Now, considerable pains and trouble are
taken to give an account of how many people
annually visit our great public establishments,
such as Kew Gardens and the British
Museum. But no reasonable person would
object to pay a centime for admission to the
instructive sights which he now inspects
gratuitously ; and it would be less trouble to
the door-keepers to take a centime from each
visitor, as a sort of counter, than to mark
down the numbers of various groups as they
arrive, sometimes in bustling crowds. When
the numbers amount to thousands and
hundreds of thousands, the sum received would
tell in the end. The government, which now
bears the whole expense, might continue to
do so as heretofore. The centime-tax might
be allowed to be appropriated to some useful
purpose required by the exigences of the
time, such as, just now, an orphan asylum
for the children of soldiers slain in the war.
No one would find fault with the Deans of
St. Paul's and Westminster if they asserted
their rights, when the Cathedral and the
Abbey are not open for divine service, by the
imposition of a centime-tax on curious
strangers. To demonstrate at once the
charitable resource thus opened, and the
convenience of reckoning decimal coins, we may
instance that in 'fifty-one the annual number
of visitors to Kew was roughly estimated at
two hundred thousand. Put the figures on
paper, and you will instantly see that in
centimes they amount to two thousand francs or
eighty pounds sterling. Suppose Hampton
Court, the National Gallery, and other like
places, to contribute their mites, and you have
at least the beginnings of something good.
The hint once given, its development is easy.

And now, to show the possibility of
naturalising decimal money in the United
Kingdom, I will briefly state a portion of the
mode proposed in a pamphlet called
Decimalism, by a Commercial Traveller — not
advocating that in preference to any other
scheme of decimalism, but simply taking it,
with all reserve, as a specimen whereby the
general topic may be stated to those to whom
it is almost or entirely new. Every man of
business who has been abroad, or who has
had dealings with foreign countries, may be
considered to think well of the proposed
reform in our national coinage. Foreign.