farthings, will gain
three-quarters of a mil; that
is, 18 farthings are eighteen
{175} mils and three-quarters
of a mil. Any number of
farthings is as many mils and
as many twenty-fourths of a
mil. To a certain extent, we
feel able to protest against
the manner in which
Kidderminster has treated the
other constituencies. We do
not hold it impossible to give
the Members of the House in
general a sufficient knowledge
of the meaning and
consequences of the _decimal_
succession of units, tens,
hundreds, thousands, etc.; and
we believe that there are in
the House itself competent
men, in number enough to teach
all the rest. All that is
wanted is the power of
starting from the known to
arrive at the unknown. Now
there is one kind of decimals
with which every member is
acquainted--the _Chiltern
Hundreds_. If public opinion
would enable the competent
minority to start from this in
their teaching, not as a
basis, but as an alternative,
in three weeks the
fundamentals would be
acquired, and members in
general would be as fit to
turn 4-1/2d. into mils, as any
boys on the lower forms of a
commercial school.

For a long peri