industry -is such a science to be stigmatised as unworthy in its purpose?

That, surely, would be a blessed system of knowledge which should contribute to place human beings above starvation, and elevate even the lowest of society to comparative plenty; nay, it would be a blessed science if it did nothing more than mitigate the hardships which it could not convert into comfort and happiness.

It must force itself, too, on every mind, that those who take this apparently high moral ground, although really false position, can hardly be aware of the close connection between the economical, the intellectual, and the moral condition of the community.

"Nature herself," says a modern writer, "forbids that you should make a wise and virtuous people out of a starving one. Men must be happy in themselves before they rejoice in the happiness of others; they must have a certain vigour of mind before they can, in the midst of habitual suffering, resist a presented pleasure; their own lives, and means of well-being, must be worth something before they can value so as to respect the life and well-being of any other person. This or that individual may be an extraordinary individual, and exhibit mental excellence in the midst of wretchedness; but a wretched and excellent people never yet has been seen on the face of the earth."*

* Encyclopædia Britannica, art. Education (I think).

Another objection to the science under review is, that it has been found to contain numerous

errors.

Now this charge may be admitted without conceding what is meant to be inferred from it, that Political Economy should on that account be set aside. Where is the science concerned with events, material or mental, that has not had to struggle through errors of the grossest character? Is it Chemistry? look to the doctrine of absolute levity. Is it Natural Philosophy? look to Nature's horror of a vacuum. Is it Astronomy? look to the immense blunder of placing the earth in the centre of the solar system, and even of the universe. Is it Physiology? look to the long-continued ignorance of the circulation of the blood, and all the errors implied by it. Is it Metaphysics? look to the doctrine presented in various phases, that ideas are things distinct on the one hand from external objects, and from the mind on the other. Is it Morals? look, if you can bear the sight, to the principles, that it is justifiable to blast the happiness and crush the very soul of a man with a black skin or a scanty creed.

No! the human understanding is on every subject fallible, but on every subject capable of surmounting its errors.

"If," as I have said on another occasion, "we trace the history of any science, we shall find it a record of mistakes and misconceptions, a narrative

128 ON THE SCIENCE OF POLITICAL ECONOMY.

of misdirected and often fruitless efforts; yet if amidst all these the science has made a progress, the struggles through which it has passed, far from evincing that the human mind is prone to error rather than to truth, furnish a decisive proof of the contrary, and an illustration of the fact, that in the actual condition of humanity mistakes are the necessary instruments by which truth is brought to light, or at least indispensable conditions of the process.

This is remarkably applicable to the science of Political Economy. Multifarious in its facts, and requiring great closeness in its deductions, it must necessarily have erred in the past, and must still be imperfect for ages to come; but, in the mean time, it comprehends a large body of truths which cannot be neglected without individual detriment and national suffering.

Essays on the Formation and Publication of Opinions.

129

DISCOURSE V.

ON THE LAST REFORMATION OF THE CALENDAR IN

ENGLAND.

SEVERAL circumstances having recently drawn my attention to the reformation of the Calendar in England, which took place about the middle of the eighteenth century, it occurred to me that a short paper on the subject would not be useless or unacceptable to the Society before which I have the honour to appear. It is, I am persuaded, a matter which is very little understood, but on which it is important to possess precise information.

By a Calendar is meant a register in which every month and every day of the year is designated by a particular name. After the true length

of the solar year has been ascertained, the rest is principally an affair of naming the days in a convenient and consistent manner.

The chief desirable point in forming a Calendar is, that the same names should be given every year to the days on which the sun and the earth are in the same relative position; or, to express it more precisely, on which the sun is in the same parts of the ecliptic: for instance, that the day of the vernal equinox should always be named the

21st of March, or receive some other definite and unvarying appellation; and, in like manner, that the day of the summer solstice should be named the 21st of June, or be otherwise precisely designated.

If the apparent revolution of the sun from one vernal equinox to another were completed in an exact number of days, this would be a perfectly easy matter. The whole difficulty of adjusting the Calendar arises from the fact, that while our globe is revolving round the sun from vernal equinox to vernal equinox, it does not complete an exact number of revolutions from midday to midday on its own axis. The annual revolution takes 365 days and the fraction of a day. In this fraction, which is about a quarter of a day, lies the whole source of confusion and perplexity. This little difference it is which has thrown the world wrong in its chronological reckoning,

It is obvious, that the solar year being thus 365 days and a quarter of a day, or thereabouts, if you reckon only 365 days in the year in your Calendar, and if the vernal equinox at the commencement is on the 21st of March, in four years it will happen on the 22d of March; and thenceforward you will get further and further wrong by one day in every four years. At this rate, in less than four hundred years, the day of the vernal equinox, having passed successively through every intermediate name, would be designated the 21st of June.