Mr. Tomline, the Member for Great Grimsby, has again returned
to his silver question. This time he wants to know whether the Chancellor of the Exchequer will help hint to try before a Court his claim to compel the Mint to coin his silver. It looks like a craze, but Mr. Towline is not crazy. lie is simply one of the richest and most crotehetty men in England, who has got hold of a perfectly correct idea by the wrong end. lie will have it that the Mint is bound by law to coin his silver. It is not bound, bat by every law of fairness it ought to be bound. Mr. Tomline has bars of silver. He cannot make shillings of them, and the Mint will not. Mr. Lowe replies that if Mr. Tomline had bars of zinc he could not make pennies of them, and the Mint would not ; but he forgets entirely the fact that Mr. Tomline, might coin his zinc if anybody would take it, and that silver coinage is a State mono- poly. Mr. Tomline, as we understand him, is not asking the Mint
to take silver at his price, but to fix a price of its own. That may be uuadvisable ; but is not half so silly as the public believes, being, as we imagine, neither more nor less than the old delusion which takes in M. Tillers, for example, about the double standard.
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