At present silver pence and twopences are only coined for Maundy money. The groat of four pence, grossus sterlingus, first coined about 1279, discontinued from the time of Elizabeth, who first coined sixpences and threepences, was revived in 1836 at the instance, or insistence, of Joseph Hume, an M.P. who, it is said, found it convenient for the exact payment of an 8_d._ London cab fare not exceeding a mile in the days when copper pennies weighing an ounce were inconvenient to carry in the pocket. He died in 1855, and in 1856 the Joey was discontinued. The threepenny piece was revived in 1845. The florin was first issued in 1849, an ill-advised attempt at decimalising the pound; it bore the inscription ‘one tenth of a pound,’ but it has utterly failed to take the place of the convenient half-crown, an important unit in the binary division of the pound. Public convenience appreciates the gold sovereign and half-sovereign, the silver half-crown, shilling, sixpence and threepence. The florin is a disturbing coin offering no advantage over two separate shillings; and the double florin is worse. No one wants the pound decimalised except a few decimal unpractical persons. A properly taught schoolboy adds up sums of money duodecimally for the pence, decimally for the shillings, converting these by twenties into pounds. It is quite easy to add up a column of pence thus: 8 and 5, 1_s._ 3_d._; and 10, 2_s._ 1_d._; and 8, 2_s._ 9_d._; and 5, 3_s._ 2_d._ With the shillings column the units are put down and the tens carried to the column of tens; an odd 1 is put down and half the remainder carried to the column of pounds. English silver coins are 37/40 = 0·925 fine, i.e. 11 oz. 2 dwt. of the now obsolete 12 oz. mint-pound. French five-franc pieces are at 0·900, other silver coins are 0·835 fine. _Gold Coins_ Of the two precious metals, only one can be the standard of value. In a gold-standard country, as England has been since 1816, the golden sovereign of lawful weight is the standard of value. As the price of silver, like that of every other commodity, varies with demand and supply, it would be futile to attempt to make silver coins correspond in actual metal value to gold coins; especially as, since the great fall in the price of silver from its demonetisation in many countries and its large production, silver coins are really tokens; tokens of value, but still tokens, not legal tender above a certain amount. A shilling melted down is only worth fivepence or less; while sovereigns melted down can be exchanged, at a trifling charge, for their weight in minted gold.