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Uk Day.] Coinage and Weights and Measures. f'2 June, 1911. Mr. MALAN- cont spoken of in connection with other nations. Now, I know that the foreigner is the largest customer of the United Kingdom, and that if a change is made by the United Kingdom without considering their wishes you might inflict a serious injury on your own trade, and therefore that is the reason of my question as to what the United States of America. Russia, and India would say about it. Have they expressed any opinion about it at all ? CHAIRMAN: No. Mr. BATCHELOR : They nearly all have the metric system and the decimal system. CHAIRMAN : Not; Russia. Sir JOSEPH WARD : I would just like to say a few words. In spirit I am in accord with what Mr. Batchelor has been urging in connection with this proposal. I believe that if it were possible to start the business of the old world again now it would be infinitely better for all portions of the world to have the metric system and the decimal system, but the difficulty that faces us now is that age brings to a country —perhaps not infirmities, as it does to the individual—but it brings about the difficulty that you cannot restore without really doing an immense amount of injury to the parts where the restoration is attempted to be brought about. For instance, I have no doubt whatever, as far as the Oversea Dominions are concerned, that we could not carry on our business properly unless Great Britain was to establish the metric system and the decimal system —that is, if we were to establish it and the old world were not to do so; in practice it would work with very great difficulty indeed. Unlike the foreign countries that have had either the metric system or the decimal system in operation for many years, it is quite a different thine. There it is the easiest thing in the world to walk into a bank or a commercial house in one of the countries which has the decimal system in operation and ask for the equivalent of a British sovereign. You can get it by wav of exchange immediately, and it does not affect their trade in the slightest; but in the parts of the British Empire where we are all trading, if we attempted to carry out what is proposed here, unless Great Britain did it, then I think it would inflict a serious amount of injury upon the trade generally of the country attempting to carry it out. What I would like to see established is uniformity of currency and uniformity of coinage. Take the case of the coinage now existing in Australia : Australia has left out the old half-crown and established a new silver Denny. In the matter of coinage, I believe it is very important that we should have uniformity, and it is particularly awkward, we being next door +o Australia, if our people go across to Australia with 10,000 half-crowns and they find over there that they are not current ooinage, because the half-crown is not part of the coinage of Australia. That is a point upon which I think it is important we should try to have uniformity. Ido not know that it is practicable to put into operation what is suggested in this resolution. I am afraid the difficulty standing in the way, without the first movement being made by the old world with its millions of people, is of such a nature as to make it next to impossible for any of the Oversea Dominions to put into operation what is suggested here. Sir EDWARD MORRIS : Like the others, I agree with the principle of the resolution, but, in view of what Mr. Buxton has stated, it is not practicable at all, and there is no use discussing it. Mr. BATCHELOR : Just in reply, I would like to say that, of course, those difficulties that have been mentioned by Mr. Buxton must be in the cognizance of everybody who considers the matter at all; but would not those