themselves to the
coin.
"If the proposed system were The confusion of ideas here
adopted, they would all be exhibited is most instructive.
compelled to live in decimals The speaker is under the
for ever; if a man dined at a impression that _we_ are
public house he would have to introducing fractions: the
pay for his dinner in decimal truth is, that we only want to
fractions. (Hear, hear.) He abandon the _more difficult_
objected to that, for he fractions which we _have got_,
thought that a man ought to be and to introduce _easier
able to pay for his dinner in fractions_. Does he deny this?
integers." (Hear, hear, and a Let us trace his denial to its
laugh.) legitimate consequences. A man
ought to pay for his dinner in
integers.

{173}

Now, if Mr. Lowe insists on it that our integer is the pound, he is bound
to admit that the present integer is the pound, of which a shilling, etc.,
are fractions. The next time he has a chop and a pint of stout in the city,
the waiter should say--"A pound, sir, to you," and should add, "Please to
remember the waiter in integers." Mr. Lowe fancies that when he pays one
and sixpence, he pays in integers, and so he does, if his integer be a
penny or a sixpence. Let him bring his mind to contemplate a mil as the
integer, the lowest integer, and the seven cents five mils which he would
pay under the new system would be payment in integers also. But, as it
happens with some others, he looks _up_ the present system, with
Cocker,[299] and Walkingame,[300] and always looks _down_ the proposed
system. The word _decimal_ is obstinately associated with _fractions_, for
which there is no need. Hence it becomes so much of a bugbear, that, to
parody the lines of Pope, which probably suggested one of Mr. Lowe's
phrases--

"Dinner he finds too painful an endeavor,
Condemned to pay in decimals for ever."

"The present system, however, A pleasant sum even for an
had not yet been changed into accomplished mathematician.
decimal system. That change What does divided by the
might appear very easy to decimal of a pound mean?
accomplished mathematicians Perhaps it means _reduced_ to
and men of science, but it was the decimal of a pound! Mr.
one which it would be very Lowe supposes, as many others
difficult to carry out. (Hear,