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

K

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 would be designated the 21st of June.

name,

On the other hand, if you make your year consist of 366 days, the vernal equinox in four years will fall three days later, namely, on the 18th of March, and you will plunge into error at a three times faster pace than on the former plan. In about 125 years, under this system, the day of the vernal equinox would come to be called the 21st of December.

Such is the dilemma in which mankind are placed. The problem they have to solve is, to prevent the vernal equinox from making that tour of the days and months, either forward or backward, which I have just described; and philosophers have been called in to assist in curbing, if I may so express it, its erratic propensity; or, to change the metaphor, in checking its natural preference of a sliding-scale to a fixed duty. It would be only wearying your attention if I were to describe the various expedients adopted for this purpose. It will be sufficient to go back to the first tolerably simple and correct method of meeting the difficulty, which is to be found in the Calendar introduced by Julius Cæsar. He and his coadjutors assumed the solar year to be exactly 365 days and six hours; and by making every fourth year consist of 366 days, which was an admirable improvement on former devices, they imagined that they had achieved a Calendar which would never require further correction.

But the fraction of a day again threw the world

wrong. In assuming this fraction to be exactly six hours, they reckoned too much by about eleven minutes. When the Julian Calendar was adopted in the year 45 before the Christian era, the vernal equinox was on the 25th of March. 371 years later, namely, at the time of the general Council of Nice, in the year A.D. 325, it happened on the 21st of that month. The excess of about eleven minutes every year had during that interval occasioned a retrogression of four days.

No successful attempt at rectifying the increasing discrepancy was made till the latter end of the sixteenth century, when Pope Gregory XIII., with the assistance of the most learned mathematicians and astronomers (who are said to have been engaged half a score years in discussing the subject), resolved to set the matter right. At this time the vernal equinox had receded ten days farther, that is, from the 21st to the 11th of March, since the before-mentioned year, A. D. 325; and it was determined to restore it to the 21st. In order to correct so important a deviation, Gregory ordained that the 5th of October, 1582, should be called the 15th. Ten days were thus eliminated from that year. The 5th and the 14th of October, with all the intermediate days, never saw the light: more correctly speaking, the names of ten days were dropped from the Calendar and never used; the whole matter, as I have already explained, being an affair of naming.