COINAGE REFORM.

New Zealand Times, Volume LXXI, Issue 4441, 22 August 1901, Page 4

COINAGE REFORM.

A discussion, which is being participated in by the leading newspapers and public men of Melbourne and Sydney, is now in progress having for its object the introduction of a rational coinage system for the Commonwealth. The movement is broader and more important than we have conveyed, for it aims at placing the weights and measures as well as the coinage upon a decimal basis. It is difficult to estimate the enormous annual tax that is placed upon. British trade and industry by the archaic and complicated system of computation that has been allowed to grow up haphazard. The unnecessary loss of a year or two in teaching children how to calculate pounds, shillings and pence, toms, cwts., quarters, pounds and go forth, is a small matter in comparison to the many years that ate wasted in the aggregate by clerks, book-keepers, and all those engaged in managing commercial transactions. xf only a beginning were made by placing our coinage on a decimal basis, the saving would be tremendous. Decimal coinage is, of coarse, “un-English”; worse, it is associated in the mind of the average Britisher with the excesses and absurdities of the doctrinaires of the French Revolution. Nevertheless, the change introduced in France two hundred years ago, by which the calculation of money, weights and measures was reduced to an almost ridiculous simplicity, was a genuine reform. Its value was promptly recognised all over the New World of the West, so that even in Canada, under British rule, dollars and cents are the coins used and the standards according to which accounts are kept. British conservatism in such matters has proved invincible, both in the Old Country land throughout Australasia;- but there are now indications that the Commonwealth will insist upon a reform being instituted in Australia. In any such movement New Zealand must share, and our commercial men axe, we believe, fully alive to the "benefits that would flow .from change.

lire great ' bogey” in Britain baa been the disturbance to trade that would be caused by altering the coinage; and the case of poor purchasers and traders has been especially cited as involving ranch possible hardship and loss. No doubt, if the value of the penny were reduced by a fractional amount, sellers would lose on many articles with regard to which the penny is the basis of value; and similarly, if the value of the penny were slightly raised, the buyer would suffer. It seems to* us that this objection would be met by keeping the penny and halfpenny intact—the latter becoming the cent, while the farthing, which is not in circulation here, could be left out of the coinage- Thus we should have two bronze coins, the penny and the halfpenny; two nickel silver co : us, value 2id and 5d respectively; three silver coins the quarter dollar, worth 12-’d; the half dollar, 2« Id; and the dollar, 4s 2d, equal to 100 cents. The halfsovereign and sovereign, by having their value raised to 10s od and 20s lOd re.

sportively, would be brought into the decimal system, and wo s hould have all kinds of mercantile calculations vastly simplified, with the minimum of disturanco to every interest. The gold sovereign, or five dollar piece, would be the standard coin;but at the same time the penny, or two cent piece, would not havo its value disturbed. This plan, it seems to us, would bo preferable to one advocated in Melbourne, under which it is proposed to make the standard gold coin of the value of 25s with the half-crown as the tenth of it, and the ‘•threepenny bit” as the cent, nowever, the question of the different coins and their adjustment is one that would have to be settled by the financial experts. The great thing is to have the public mind penetrated with the desirableness of reform. Thera can be no doubt that New Zealand, which docs the bulk of her commercial inter, change with Groat Britain, has some reason for adhering to the coinage in, vogue in the Old Country ; hut this fact should not blind our mercantile leaders to the importance of urging the reiorm. li the decimal system were to bo adopted by Australasia, Great Britain would Boon follow suit, and a pmcScal step towards the commercial federation of the English speaking people tvould he taken. It is to bo hoped that our Ohamlmr of Commerce will give this important subject the attention it merits.