1540 IMPERIAL UNITY [PART VIII 
Imperial Government were anxious to make the change 
the passing of such a resolution might strengthen their 
hands. 
Mr. Buxton,! on behalf of the Home Government, could 
not support the resolution because he could not undertake 
that the reform would be carried out. If they had a clean 
slate the decimal system of coinage and the metric system 
of weights and measures could advantageously be adopted, 
but this was not the case, and the House of Commons had 
rejected the proposal to make it compulsory because trade, 
commerce, and domestic arrangements would be seriously 
upset. 
He added in reply to Mr. Malan 2 that the foreign countries 
had not pressed for the change being made, and Sir Joseph 
Ward,? while agreeing with the theoretic merits of the metric 
and decimal systems, recognized that at present no change 
was practicable, and as Sir Edward Morris,* on behalf of 
Newfoundland, concurred in this view, Mr. Batchelor with- 
drew the resolution after he had suggested that the difficulty 
might be obviated if ten or fifteen years’ notice was given of 
the intended change. 
The subject of coinage was revived on June 16, when 
Sir J. Ward 5 took the opportunity of advocating, not the 
decimal system, but a system of interchange of coins, com- 
plaining of the disuse of the half-crown as legal tender in 
the Commonwealth, and the resulting loss to New Zealanders, 
The Australian representatives combated the assertion, 
but admitted that they omitted the coin from the new 
coinage with a view to approximating to a decimal system. 
Sir W. Laurier ® reminded the Conference that Canada, 
allowed British coins as legal tender, but said they were little 
used, and he advocated theoretically the decimal system as 
the only sensible one. Mr. Lloyd George 7 deprecated any 
kind of coinage reform in view of the conservatism of 
* Cd. 5745, pp. 166, 167. 
Ibid., p. 168. 
Ibid., pp. 368, 369, 
Ibid., pp. 370, 371. 
Ibid., pp. 167, 168. 
Ibid., p. 168. 
Ibid., pp. 369. 370.