Tne state of the silver currency of Great Britain has been attracting considerable attention at home. The continuous and heavy fall in the price of the raw metal has it is said led to some counter-felting of the coinage, and is likely to lead to operations of that kind and on a more extended scale. The counter-felts, unlike former presentments of the same sort are not made of base metal, but are said to contain about as much silver as in the genuine coins. This may well be when we find that the seignorage on silver coin was, according to the annual report of the Deputy-Master of the Mint for 1886, at the rate of 41.13-16 per cent. It has been recommended that some addition should be made to the intrinsic value a precaution That is, that State should by erding to the quantity of silver in the silver coins diminish the profits of there who may be furnishing the illegal coin. But it seems doubtful if this would be more than a partial remeily if the price of silver is to range about its recent and present figures. To fill up with silver the thirty or forty per cent of profit or signor age would make the coins inconveniently bulky. It would also deprive them of their character of tokens. In order to get rid of the inconvenience which the publiewould suffer from the weight of the silver coins being increased, it has been suggested that a paper currency representing florins and double florins should be issued, their full equivalent in silver coin to be retained by the nation. These two shilling and four shilling notes would be of a higher class than the paper currency of Austria and Italy, but at the best they would only be equal to United States Silver Certificates though on a meaner scale. s But it is not likely that any amelia ing scheme of this kind will be seriously entertained by the English people, whose willingness to receive one pound notes in place of sovereigns has yet to be tested. The disadvantages of increasing the quantity of silver in the coinage have been perceived of those who advocate it, and to meet part of them they have' proposed that the change should be made gradually. They take it for granted that the heavy and the light coin would circulate side by side for a while, but. they leave out of sight that the introduction of a new and intrinsically more valuable coin would at once arouse the suspicions of the common run of people, who do not reason or stop to consider such matters, and
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.