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changed in less than a quarter of a century. Our country is new, and our people flexible and ready for reformation and improvement. Used to change, we cannot claim that our coinage should be adopted as the model for old, stable, and conservative countries, where innovation is a crime, and reform the signal of danger and alarm.

It might seem difficult at first sight to retain all these important requisites, and secure uniformity without disturbing the existing system to an incovenient and alarming extent-to preserve the gramme, the pound, the franc, and the decimal system, the present names and values, and the recent ratio between gold and silver, without violating good faith, or interfering with the obligations between man and man. But though difficult, it may be done.

If the franc is retained as the silver unit, it will be easy to accommodate our dollar to this, by making it exactly equal to five francs. This would increase its present amount of pure silver only about one-half of one per cent.; and as we have, but three years since, reduced it seven per cent., so small a change is unexceptionable.

If 143 be taken as the proper ratio between gold and silver, the weight of 25 francs in gold will be readily determined. The pure silver would weigh 1123 grammes, and the gold 7.62712. This would equal 117.7505 grains, and agree almost exactly with 1,000 English farthings. An ounce of standard gold, or 440 grains of pure gold, is coined at the English mint into £3 17s. 10d. So that a pound contains 113.0016 grains, and a 1,000 farthings 117.7100. This differs from the 25 francs only three hundredths of one per cent. If the 25 francs of gold were made to weigh exactly 7 grammes, the agreement would be still more complete, although the ratio between the two metals would then be a trifle less than 14. The number of grains in 7 grammes is 117.7178, which differs from 1,000 farthings of the present English standard pound less than the ten thousandth part. By counting 25 francs a guinea, or a thousand farthings, and by making the franc and the guinea of these two weights, viz., 4 grammes of silver, and 7 grammes of gold, the currencies of France and England could be brought into harmony with each other, and with the market rates of gold and silver. By increasing our half-eagle from 116.1 grains of pure gold to 117.7178, the coins of the three nations would become identical. These are all the changes that are necessary to bring the three currencies into harmony.

1. As to the gold coins: to make the American half-eagle and the French piece of twenty-five francs identical with a new English coin containing one thousand sterling farthings, to be called a guinea. Its weight to be 78 grammes of pure gold, or 83% of standard gold, of 90 per cent. fineness.

2. As to the silver coins: to make the American dollar and

the English four shilling piece, which they propose to denominate a double florin (but which ought to be called a dollar), identical with the five franc piece of the French, viz., 22 grammes of pure silver, or 25 grammes of standard silver, of 90 per cent. fineness.

These changes cannot be objected to by the United States, because they are too slight to be noticed in the ordinary transactions of commerce, and because they tend to repair the slight injustice of our legislation of 1853, by increasing the dollar, which was then made 7 per cent. lighter than it had been, and by increasing the eagle about one per cent., which by its real depreciation had made the change of 1853 necessary.

It ought not to be objected to in England, because their principal currency is in gold, and that is retained unaltered. The new proposed coins-a florin and a guinea-would be exactly equal to 100 and 1,000 farthings, and would thus permit them to introduce the decimal system, without changing their unit or altering their common names. The present money of account could easily be reduced to the new coins, and existing contracts settled with simplicity and justice. Thus, £3 5s. 6d. reduced to farthings, would give 3,144 farthings, or 3.144 guineas, or 3 guineas 1 florin and 44 farthings. The shilling might be made to contain 12 pence, or fifty farthings, and be exactly half the florin. This guinea is not of exactly the same weight as the coin formerly used of that name, but as the name is familiar, and the new coin nearly of the same value as the present guinea, the name might be retained.

The greatest difficulty would probably come from France. Her five franc silver piece is indeed retained unaltered. Her gramme is made the unit by which all the coins are to be weighed. The decimal system, for which she has made so many exertions and sacrifices, is extended to England. The standard of fineness, long since adopted by her and then by the United States, is made universal. By all these alterations the pride and self-love of the French would be gratified; but as she would be required to call in her present gold coins and substitute in their stead new ones of greater weight, opposition might be expected. The present napoleon of 20 francs is 15 times lighter than 20 silver francs. The proposed coin of 25 francs (which ought to be called an eagle), is only 14 times lighter. The present gold franc weighs 322.58 millegrammes, and the proposed one is to weigh 3388. The old coins will have to be re-melted and re-issued about one-twentieth heavier than before. This is made necessary by the depreciation of gold, and is, therefore, just to the people, and just to the govern

ment creditors.

But, though all these reasons favour this change, it is to be feared that the desire to depreciate, rather than to improve, the weight of the coin, which is so natural to sovereigns who have debts to pay,

will out-weigh all these considerations, and induce them to reject every such proposition. We have changed our coins three times in the United States, but have always debased them. The English have changed their silver coins nineteen times in the last eight hundred years, and only twice have they made them contain more metal than before, the increase being then only one or two per cent. So has their gold coin been depreciated 22 out of the 24 times it has been altered. The same is true in the history of other countries, and it is to be feared that such will be the future history of governments. If the French emperor should rise superior to these unholy motives, and consent to give to his people a larger amount of gold than was promised when gold was more valuable than it now is, all difficulties might be removed.

Here is a table containing the changes proposed, with the per centage of difference between the old and new coins:

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The extension of this system to the other countries of Europe would not be difficult. The Russian imperial would correspond to our eagle. The sequin of Tuscany, the ducat of Austria, Denmark, Sweden, Bavaria, Hanover, Saxony, Wirtemberg and Holland, would be very nearly the same as eleven francs. And so the other coins of Europe could be declared equal to a certain number of dollars or francs or shillings, and new coins issued containing such a multiple of the unit adopted by the three great commercial nations of the world, as might be approved by the rulers or by the people of each particular country.

Never in the history of commerce was so favourable an opportunity presented for securing a uniform coinage, "exchangeable everywhere, without objection or delay or expense, by name and by weight, according to law and to custom. Commerce has been extended wider and farther than ever before in the history of the world; the coins of different countries approximate already to simple multiples of a common unit; the discoveries of California and Australia are disturbing the relative values of the precious metals; the true principles on which the coinage of money depends, are everywhere understood; the desire for free trade and universal brother

hood among nations is to be found among the rulers and the people of every portion of the civilized world, and everything favours the establishment of a single uniform currency for every nation in Europe and America.

ART. VIII. CICERO DE OFFICIIS.

M. Tullii Ciceronis in Philosophiam ejusque Partes Merita.
Auctore RAHHELE KUEHNER, Dr. Hamburgi. 1825.
M. Tullii Ciceronis De Officiis Libri Tres. Ex recensione Jo.
MICH. et JAC. FRID. HEUSINGERORUM. Brunsviga. 1820.
M. Tullii Ciceronis De Officiis Libri Tres. With English Notes,
chiefly selected and translated from the editions of Zumpt and
Bonnell. By THOMAS A. THACHER, Assistant Professor of
Latin in Yale College. New York: D. Appleton & Co.
1850.

M. Tullii Ciceronis ad Marcum Filium Libri Tres. Erklaert von G. FR. UNGER. Leipsig. 1852.

FIELDING has compared the ancients to "a rich common, where every person who hath the smallest tenement in Parnassus hath a free right to fatten his muse." From time immemorial this convenient doctrine has met with general acceptance, and, as a custom, has prevailed even with those who could make no just claim to a freehold on that consecrated ground. The shepherds of Apulia and arid Calabria used to drive their flocks to the mountain pastures of Lucania and Samnium in spring, ascending to valleys higher and higher with the increasing heats of summer, and returning to the plains in the same leisurely way with the approach of autumn, While upon this ager scripturarius the slave minders of the herds literally "tempered the wind to the shorn lamb," they were themselves in a very exposed position as regarded their morals, and generally ended by becoming banditti. Their owners left them. and their flocks to live in the best way they could. They provided them with nothing, and to their demand for clothing, sometimes replied in this most suggestive way, "What, are there no travellers with clothes on?" For this privilege of pasturing their herds, and converting their keepers into robbers, the owners had a tax to pay-the scriptura-and none could escape the inexorable publicani. But the free right to fatten one's muse upon the rich common of antiquity is subject to no such prohibition, and is attended

with no such deplorable consequences. The only tax which he has to pay who resorts to the wide domain enriched and left by the ancients for his intellectual development and nutriment, is that of intense application and glowing enthusiasm. He must "quit his ease;" he must feel that he is upon his own estate, bequeathed to him by his intellectual ancestors, and he should tread it with the firm step of an hereditary proprietor, and cultivate it with the industry which personal and individual interest alone can impart.

We heard a few years ago a homely, illustration of the advantages derived from a connection with the ancients. A traveller had gone with a party of friends to witness an excavation at Pompeii specially ordered for their gratification. In this city of the dead, his mind became absorbed by strange reveries crowding thickly upon him from the spirit of the past. At the hour fixed for return to Naples, he slipped away from his companions, feeling the fascination of the spot too vividly to leave it. With unsated curiosity, with ever fresh and unflagging interest, he lingered behind in the villa of Diomed, whence were taken so many exquisite ornaments, and the impression of the breast of a young woman left upon the ashes which had gradually gathered around her. "Death, like a statuary," says Chateaubriand, "had modelled his victim." At the Herculanean gate, where was found the skeleton of a soldier on guard, he paused to admire that iron firmness and perfect discipline which could endure to sustain such an appalling scene, and to await the gradual but foreseen and certain result of the ashy shower closing around him, and stifling life by inches. In the street of tombs, he pondered long before one upon which was sculptured a ship arriving in port, the anchor ready to be cast, the sailors aloft furling sail. It was Cicero's conviction of what death is, beautifully represented to the eye, "Portum potius paratum nobis et perfugium putemus." The day waned, and the last train was soon to depart. To the right rose Vesuvius, sending up a graceful volume of smoke and flame, in association a sort of infernal region, in the centre of a delicious heaven, which spreads around and above, bewitching the senses and the soul. To the left gleamed the laughing and joyous sea, wooing with soft whispers and gentle embraces the shore-gratum littus amœni_secessuswhich winds to meet it in a thousand graceful forms. How could the enthusiast leave these thrilling and captivating scenes! As he gazed on either hand, and pictured to himself the events which had taken place in the space of sea and earth which lay so tranquilly before him, the rough voice of the guide broke the spell of his enchantment, as he said, "Signore, blame not Vesuvius too much. If it destroyed Pompeii, it gave me and many more an occupation. It is an evil wind, you know, which blows nobody good. Mille grazie a Vesuvio," said he, bowing respectfully towards the volcano; and he added, "Mille grazie a Signore," as the buono mano touched his palm, and practically enforced the truth of what he had said.

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