reater
depth.]

DECIMAL COINAGE.

Among the paradoxers are the political paradoxers who care not how far they
go in debate, their only object being to carry the House with them for the
current evening. What I have said of editors I repeat of them. The
preservation of a very marked instance, the association of political
recklessness with cyclometrical and Apocalyptic absurdity, may have a
tendency to warn, not indeed any hardened public-man and sinner, but some
young minds which have yearnings towards politics, and are in formation of
habits.

In the debate on decimal coinage of July 12, 1855, Mr. Lowe,[298] then
member for Kidderminster, an effective speaker and a smart man, exhibited
himself in a speech on which I wrote a comment for the Decimal Association.
I have seldom seen a more wretched attempt to distort the points of a
public question than the whole of this speech. Looking at the intelligence
shown by the speaker on other occasions, {170} it is clear that if charity,
instead of believing all things, believed only all things but one, he might
tremble for his political character; for the honesty of his intention on
this occasion might be the incredible exception. I give a few paragraphs
with comments:

"In commenting on the humorous, but still argumentative speech of Mr. Lowe,
the member for Kidderminster, we may observe, in general, that it consists
of points which have been several times set forth, and several times
answered. Mr. Lowe has seen these answers, but does not allude to them, far
less attempt to meet them. There are, no doubt, individuals, who show in
their public speaking the outward and visible signs of a greater degree of
acuteness than they can summon to guide their private thinking. If Mr. Lowe
be not one of these, if the power of his mind in the closet be at all
comparable to the power of his tongue in the House, it may be suspected
that his reserve with respect to what has been put forward by the very
parties against whom he was contending, arises from one or both of two
things--a high opinion of the arguments which he ignored--a low opinion of
the generality of the persons whom he addressed. [Both, I doubt not].

"Did they calculate in florins In the name of common sense,
?" how can it be objected to a
system that people do not use
it before it is introduced?