Page:The Economic Journal Volume 1.djvu/568

 TIlE ECONOMIC JOURNAL be found proportionately too high. It is calculated that the sum of J400,000 set apart by the Act will be sufficient to meet the expenses. of withdrawing 9.0,000,000 in sovereigns and P,500,000 in half, sovereigns, an operation which could not be completed within less than two or three years, and for the present, therefore, ample provision has been made for the expenditure which will fall upon the Mint. The principle of the maintenance of the gold coinage at the expense of the State has been affirmed, and it will only remain for Parliament to vote. in course of time such further sums as may be each year required to give effect to its decision. The only remaining provision of the Act is one which commends itself to common sense. When the Coinage Act of 1870 for the first time fixed a limit of weight for each individual gold, silver, and bronze coin, it took as the 'remedy' or margin of weight within which each coin could be legally issued, the proportionate fraction of the total deviation of weight which had up to that time been allowed for the coins when weighed in bulk. The result has been that, especially in the case of the smaller coins, the remedy on which has necessarily been very minute, the number of rejections of finished coins, in all other respects fit for issue, has been out of all proportion to the reasonable requirements of accuracy in coining. The Act, while leaving un- touched the remedy for the sovereign, authorizes a small extension of those for the half-sovereign and silver coins, amounting in the case of the half-sovereign to five-hundredths of a grain only, and in the case of the shilling to twenty-one hundredths of a grain. As regards the other silver coins, the latitude is increased in a greater ratio for those of lower than for those of higher denominations. By thus legalizing the issue of coins slightly heavier or lighter than at present, the new law enables the Mint to ensure a considerably more rapid out- turn of coin. NOTES ON CURRENT ToPics. TH preliminary reports of the Census for 1891 clench the argu- ments in fayour of a quinquennial Census. For it is made manifest that the method upon which our estimates of the population during the intercensal periods are at present obtained is grossly inaccurate. Hitherto it might have been hoped that, though the estimates for particular places were erroneous, yet for a whole kingdom, by a well- known statistical principle, the totals were fairly accurate; in the case of England and Wales at least. But now it appears that, even in that case the best adapted for the apphcation of the official method the estimate exceeds the real figure by some seven hundred thousand, that is by almost two-and-a-half per cent. of the real figure, 29,001,018. The items are of course much more inaccurate; the branches are even more crrupt than the tree. Mr. Humphreys, in a paper recently read. before the Royal Statistical Society, gives instances of towns for which