A Budget of Paradoxes Volume II Part 16

_Member._ You don't mean that you do without a book!

_Boy._ Book be blowed. Come now, old un, here's summut for both on us. I got a florin, you gives me a half-a-crown for it, and I larns you the new money, gives you your oranges, and calls you a brick into the bargain.

_Member_ (_to himself_). Never had such a chance of getting off half-a-crown for value since that ---- fellow Bowring carried his crochet.

(_Aloud._) Well, boy, it's a bargain. Now!

_Boy._ Why, look 'e here, my trump, its a farden more to the tizzy--that's what it is.

_Member_. What's that?

_Boy._ Why, you knows a sixpence when you sees it.

(_Aside_). Blest if I think he does! Well, its six browns and a farden now. A lady buys two oranges, and forks {179} out a sixpence; well in coorse, I hands over fippence farden astead of fippence. I always gives a farden more change, and takes according.

_Member_ (_in utter surprise, lets his oranges tumble into the gutter_). Never mind! They won't be wanted now. (_Walks off one way. Boy makes a pa.s.s of naso-digital mesmerism, and walks off the other way_).

To the poor, who keep no books, the whole secret is "Sixpence farthing to the half s.h.i.+lling, twelve pence halfpenny to the s.h.i.+lling." The _new twopence halfpenny_, or cent, will be at once five to the s.h.i.+lling.

In conclusion, we remark that three very common misconceptions run through the hon. Member's argument; and, combined in different proportions, give variety to his patterns.

First, he will have it that we design to bring the uneducated into contact with _decimal fractions_. If it be so, it will only be as M. Jourdain was brought into contact with prose. In fact, _Quoi! quand je dis, Nicole, apportez-moi mes pantoufles, c'est de la prose?_[305] may be rendered: "What! do you mean that _ten to the florin is a cent a piece_ must be called decimal reckoning?" If we had to comfort a poor man, horror-struck by the threat of _decimals_, we should tell him what manner of fractions had been inflicted upon him hitherto; nothing less awful than _quarto-duodecimo-vicesimals_, we should a.s.sure him.

Secondly, he a.s.sumes that the penny, such as it now is, will remain, as a coin of estimation, after it has ceased to be a coin of exchange; and that the ma.s.s of the people will continue to think of prices in old pence, and to calculate them in new ones, or else in new mils. No answer is required to this, beyond the mere statement of the nature of the a.s.sumption and denial.

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Thirdly, he attributes to the uneducated community a want of perception and of operative power which really does not belong to them. The evidence offered to the Committee of the House shows that no fear is entertained on this point by those who come most in contact with farthing purchasers. And this would seem to be a rule,--that is, fear of the intelligence of the lower orders in the minds of those who are not in daily communication with them, no fear at all in the minds of those who are.

A remarkable instance of this distinction happened five-and-twenty years ago. The Admiralty requested the Astronomical Society to report on the alterations which should be made in the _Nautical Almanac_, the seaman's guide-book over the ocean. The greatest alteration proposed was the description of celestial phenomena in _mean_ (or clock time), instead of _apparent_ (or sundial) time, till then always employed. This change would require that in a great many operations the seaman should let alone what he formerly altered by addition or subtraction, and alter by addition or subtraction what he formerly let alone; provided always that what he formerly altered by addition he should, when he altered at all, alter by subtraction, and _vice versa_. This was a tolerably difficult change for uneducated skippers, working by rules they had only learned by rote. The Astronomical Society appointed a Committee of forty, of whom nine were naval officers or merchant seamen [I was on this Committee]. Some men of science were much afraid of the change. They could not trust an ignorant skipper or mate to make those alterations in their routine, on the correctness of which the s.h.i.+p might depend. Had the Committee consisted of men of science only, the change might never have been ventured on. But the naval men laughed, and said there was nothing to fear; and on their authority the alteration was made. The upshot was, that, after the new almanacs appeared, not a word of complaint was ever heard on the matter.

Had the House of Commons had to {181} decide this question, with Mr. Lowe to quote the description given by Basil Hall[306] (who, by the way, was one of the Committee) of an observation on which the safety of the s.h.i.+p depended, worked out by the light of a lantern in a gale of wind off a lee sh.o.r.e, this simple and useful change might at this moment have been in the hands of its tenth Government Commission.

[_Aug. 14, 1866._ The Committee was appointed in the spring of 1830: it consisted of forty members. Death, of course, has been busy; there are now left Lord Shaftesbury,[307] Mr. Babbage,[308] Sir John Herschel,[309] Sir Thomas Maclear[310] (Astronomer Royal at the Cape of Good Hope), Dr.

Robinson[311] (of Armagh), Sir James South,[312] Lord Wrottesley,[313] and myself].

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THE TONAL SYSTEM.

Project of a new system of arithmetic, weight, measure, and coins, proposed to be called the tonal system, with sixteen to the base. By J. W. Mystrom.[314] Philadelphia, 1862, 8vo.

That is to say, sixteen is to take the place of ten, and to be written 10.

The whole language is to be changed; every man of us is to be sixteen-stringed Jack and every woman sixteen-stringed Jill. Our old _one_, _two_, _three_, up to sixteen, are to be (_Noll_ going for nothing, which will please those who dislike the memory of _Old Noll_) replaced by An, De, Ti, Go, Su, By, Ra, Me, Ni, Ko, Hu, Vy, La, Po, Fy, Ton; and then Ton-an, Ton-de, etc. for 17, 18, etc. The number which in the system has the symbol

28(13)5(11)7(14)0(15)

(using our present compounds instead of new types) is to be p.r.o.nounced

Detam-memill-lasan-suton-hubong-ramill-posanfy.

The year is to have sixteen months, and here they are:

Anuary, Debrian, Timander, Gostus, Suvenary, Bylian, Ratamber, Mesudius, Nictoary, Kolumbian, Husamber, Vyctorius, Lamboary, Polian, Fylander, Tonborius.

Surely An-month, De-month, etc. would do as well. Probably the wants of poetry were considered. But what are we to do with our old poets? For example--

"It was a night of lovely June, High rose in cloudless blue the moon."

Let us translate--

"It was a night of lovely Nictoary, High rose in cloudless blue the (what, in the name of all that is absurd?)."

And again, _Fylander_ thrown into our December! What is {183} to become of those lines of Praed, which I remember coming out when I was at Cambridge,--

"Oh! now's the time of all the year for flowers and fun, the Maydays; To trim your whiskers, curl your hair, and sinivate the ladies."

If I were asked which I preferred, this system or that of Baron Ferrari[315] already mentioned, proceeding by _twelves_, I should reply, with Candide, when he had the option given of running the gauntlet or being shot: Les volontes sont libres, et je ne veux ni l'un ni l'autre.[316] We can imagine a speculator providing such a system for Utopia as it would be in the mind of a Laputan: but to explain how an engineer who has surveyed mankind from Philadelphia to Rostof on the Don should for a moment entertain the idea of such a system being actually adopted, would beat a jury of solar-system-makers, though they were shut up from the beginning of Anuary to the end of Tonborius. When I see such a scheme as this imagined to be practicable, I admire the wisdom of Providence in providing the quadrature of the circle, etc., to open a harmless sphere of action to the possessors of the kind of ingenuity which it displays. Those who cultivate mathematics have a right to speak strongly on such efforts of arithmetic as this: for, to my knowledge, persons who have no knowledge are frequently disposed to imagine that their makers are true brothers of the craft, a little more intelligible than the rest.

SOME SMALL PARADOXERS.

Vis inertiae victa,[317] or Fallacies affecting science. By James Reddie.[318] London, 1862, 8vo.

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An attack on the Newtonian mechanics; revolution by gravitation demonstrably impossible; much to be said for the earth being the immovable center. A good a.n.a.lysis of contents at the beginning, a thing seldom found.

The author has followed up his attack in a paper submitted to the British a.s.sociation, but which it appears the a.s.sociation declined to consider. It is ent.i.tled--

_Victoria Toto Coelo_; or, Modern Astronomy recast. London, 1863, 8vo.

At the end is a criticism of Sir G. Lewis's _History of Ancient Astronomy_.

On the definition and nature of the Science of Political Economy. By H.

Dunning Macleod,[319] Esq. Cambridge, 1862, 8vo.

A paper read--but, according to the report, not understood--at the British a.s.sociation. There is a notion that political economy is entirely mathematical; and its negative quant.i.ty is strongly recommended for study: it contains "the whole of the Funds, Credit, 32 parts out of 33 of the value of Land...." The mathematics are described as consisting of--first, number, or Arithmetic; secondly, the theory of dependent quant.i.ties, subdivided into dependence by cause and effect, and dependence by simultaneous variations; thirdly, "independent quant.i.ties or unconnected events, which is the theory of probabilities." I am not ashamed, having the British a.s.sociation as a co-non-intelligent, to say I do not understand this: there is a paradox in it, and the author should give further explanation, especially of his negative quant.i.ty. Mr. Macleod has gained {185} praise from great names for his political economy; but this, I suspect, must have been for other parts of his system.

On the principles and practice of just Intonation, with a view to the abolition of temperament.... By General Perronet Thompson.[320] Sixth Edition. London, 1862, 8vo.