The Northern Daily Times.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1853-11-19 00:00:00

AMERICA.

The Screw Steamer Glasgow arrived in the Clyde
this morning at one o'clock, from New York, with
three days later news. She has made the passage
in twelve days and a half.
The Africa, from Liverpool, arrived out at New
York on the 4th.

The following is a report of the New York
markets :
ASHES.—About 50 barrels Pot, were sold at 5
dollars.

iitnnikesTuFFs.—The market for Western State
Flour, under the Africa's news, advanced from
181 to 25 cents.
SOUTHERN FLoun has improved 122 to 181 cents
per h rrel R:ilp.s were merle of. cni. nrvirtm-rt
to good brands. Other kindS of Flour and Meal
were held higher.

WHEAT had advanced--RYE was steady.—Bin-
LEY unchanged. OATS better.

COTTON.--The market has 'not been materially
affected by the steamer's news. Although the
weather was quite favourable, total sales of last
day 565 bales.
LINSEED OIL lower. Sales made of 4,000 gallons
English, at 66 to 67 cents, American was selling
n lots from store at 67 to 69 cents.

PORK was rather firmer, with a good demand.

FREIGHTS TO LIVERPOOL.

Corn taken at 121 to 13 ; wheat, 13; flour, 3s 3d
to 3s 9d ; cotton, id to 3-16 d.
The Stock market was buoyant and active.
Exchange flat at 1091 for prime signatures on
London, and very good bills are offered at 1098 to
1091, the tendency being downwards.
The Glasgow brings no political news, of im
portance.

THE WEST INDIA MAIL.

The West India mail-steamer, Solent, arrived
yesterday morning at Southampton, with 211,3061.
in specie, forty five passengers, and advices from
Demerara to the 25th ; Jamaica, 26th ; Barbadoes,
27th, ult., and St. Thomas's to the Ist inst.
The session of the legislature had commenced,
and Sir Henry Barkley had delivered his speech.

The mining operations were very successful ;
and the most favorable accounts are given of the
agricultural prospects of Jamaica.
Business generally was dull, and produce
scarcely so high in value. Corn was becoming
scarce, as was also tonnage.
Exchange on London, at ninety days, was
quoted at 1 per cent. premium; sixty days, 11;
and thirty days, 2 per cent.

In Grenada, owing to a great quantity of wet
weather, the crops were small, and from scarcity
of labour could not be got in in time•
At St. Vincent's, crops very backward, owing to
constant rain and scarcity of labour Fever was
very prevalent at Grenada and St. Vincent, but
troops healthy. The order for withdrawing white
troops caused great dissatisfaction.

At Demerara, fever in its most malignant form
had began its ravages, confining itself, however,
to new arrivals and shipping. Weather favorable.

A FURIOUS FIIILY.—Au Irish labourer named Hugh
Fury, while in a state of intoxication, in a spirit shop in
Glasgow, on the night of Monday last, fastened a party
quarrel upon an elderly man named Alexander Brown.
Fury boasted that he was the brightest Orangeman in the
house. " I am no party man," said Brown, "but lam a
Freemason." " Then, bedad !" said the furious Fury, " a
Freemason killed my fadther," and he struck down the
brother of the mystic tie in a twinkling. Fury was fined a
guinea on Wednesday at the police-court.
NEW ARCTIC EXPEDITION.—It was unanimously agreed
at the meeting of the members of the Geographical Society,
on Monday night last, that the chairman, Sir Roderick
Murchison, should solicit the admiralty to send out an-
other expedition to the arctic regions,in the summer of
1854. None of the solicitations of the society have
hitherto been made in vain. It is not intented at present
to send out any more expeditions in search of Sir John
Franklin and his missing companions in a north-west direc-
tion, although further supplies will, if found requisite, be
sent to Bpechey Island for Sir Edward Belcher's expedi-
tion. The new .4.rcti.c expedition is intented to proceed in
quite a contrary direction to any of those previously sent
out from this country in search of Sir John Franklin and the
officers and crews of the Erebus and Terror discovery ships,
now upwards of eight years absent from. England. The
Phoenix screw steam-sloop will be again commissiond by
Captain Edward Englefield, F.R.S., who was presented
with a gold medal by the Geographical Society at the last
meeting, and he will proceed to the arctic regions in her,
and endeavour to make a passage into the Polar Sea to the
north-east of Spitzbergen. In addition to the English
bottles found some time ago on the coast of Siberia, and
forwarded to England by the Russian Government, in-
telligence has been received that several deer has been found
at Spitzbergen with their ears cut, a proof that they had
been in the hands of persons who had adopted that English
mode of marking them. The admiralty have liberally
granted £5O to each of the gunroom officers, and £35 to
each of the other officers of the Phoenix screw steam-sloop,
as compensation for the expenses they had incurred in pro-
viding for their mess for a longer period than their recent
four months' voyage would have warranted for so short a
period, and as they had prepared their stocks to- last for
the winter had they been frozen up during their pro-
gress.

DR. BOWRING'S LECTURE ON DECIMAL
CURRENCY,

Yesterday, at two o'clock, a lecture on decimal currency
was delivered at the Collegiate Institution by Dr. Bowring,
who has recently returned from China. The scholars of the
institution were present, but otherwise, owing to the short-
ness of the notice given, there was not a large attendance.
Mr. Was. BROWN introduced the learned gentleman to
the audience ; he remarked that he had come at considerable
inconvenience from Bolton to deliver those leetureth

Dr. Bownieret then came forward, and was loudly ap-
plauded. He said he felt "(meat gratification to be enabled
in any '7;*y to co-operate let-111.the excellent exertions of his
valuable friend, Me. -Browe, Who had been endeavouring,
and he believed successfully endeavouring to supersede diet
strange and barbarous systeni which lied pdssession of the
`eoinage and curie* of this Country, and to introduce some-
thing more intelligible, more simple, and, of course, practi-
cally more useful. How it had happened, considering that
the Divine being had given to every one of them a decimal ele-
ment—ten fingers—wherewith all ilaqons began to count;
how it had happened that they has introduced into their
eyeterd so much of entanglement and annoyance as were as-
sociated with the different forms that we employ was very
difficult to understand. For a decimal system seemed so
natural that one of the great authors of antiquity, Aristotle,
said ;—" It seems the law of nature that 10; 100; and 1,000
should be adopted, Otherwise it is impossible to explain their
universality; not only amongst civilised, but amongst unci-
vilised nations." He dared to say there were many of his
young friends around him who were able to read the
Odyssey, and there was one of the earliest records of what
might be called elenientary deeiteal netetioh. they, per-
haps. recollected that Proteus was introduced as counting
the Phocce or sea calves, and the poet said, " before he sat
down amongst the seals he arranged them all in fives as
shepherds range their flocks, and then he laid down to sleep
amongst them." Mr. John Quincey Adams in an extremely
valuable report which he made to the eongtees in Anierica,
says, and with great truth, "that the debit-nal system
existed before the flood." They were aware lercipably that
the greatest 'Umber that had been found antecedent to the
deluge Was the number of years of Methuselah, which were
recorded by hundreds, tens, and units. According- to Owl:,
arrangement it could be put down by three simple figures ;
but the Romans were so little advanced in the art of notation
according to the system employed by them, nine figures were
necessary to record 969. Throughout all history, the bible,
all the early Greek and Ronian histofiene, we find
.every-
thing wrote as it were around lerge niinibeke, and around
decinial minebers. Tens; liundieds, thoneandS, hundreds of
thonsende, and eVeri Millions had always been found the
Most convenient system of notation. He said before that
amongst all nations the fingers, which they knew represented
the digits, were almost universally employed for the purpose
of accountancy and if they Wonld hollow him a little through
this enormous and magnificent power which had been created
by the decimal system, they would see what an enormous
instrument it had been to assist calculations which withot it
were totally impossible. Rude nations seldom go beyond
the number ten. There was one nation they knew of which
had only two numerals, one representing one; and the other
representing a niultitdde, and there Were expressions in the
language by which the difference between one and the many
was recorded. It was easy enough for a savage to get a
notion of 5, and even an idea of 10 ; and there were a many,
a great many languages; in which the word " five " was re-
presented by one hand, and the word "ten" by
two hands. Even in one of our modern languages the
word for ten and the word for toes,—he spoke of the
German language—was employed to represent the
numeral ten. Now, the multitude of languages in
the world was very little understood. He believed
that at this moment there were no less than about
3,000 various languages spoken in the various parts
of the world. In pursuing ,some of his enquiries he had
examined about four hundred of the numerals in four hun-
dred African languages, and in a great number of those
the reckoning went on from 1,2, 3,4, 5, on the fingers of
the left hand, and then 6 was made by one finger of the
righ hand, 7 by two fingers, and so on up to ten, which was
represented by both hands. A great many nations which
had got to the point of reckoning 20; tepeaented it by the
hands and the feet; called 20, the human being or complete
man ; and some savage nations had gone as far as 60 or 80 :,
they said two men represented 40, three men 60, and four
men 80. All those ideas, they would observe. had been by
the decimal system. Amongst the ancients, the Peruvians
had made the greatest intellectual progress; and Humboldt
gave a very curious list of their numerals, showing that
like ourselves they proceeded from one to ten, from ten to
a hundred, from hundreds to thousands, and from thousands
to a million, always keeping their accounts in decimal
rotation. Now, the discovery of the decimal power, was
probably ono of the greatest instances of human progress,
and tended more to promote all calculating knowledge
than any discovery that is recorded in the history of human
improvement. What the telescope had done to enable them
to penetrate the remotest distances—and he would mention
it, as a most extraordinary result, that its powers had now
W a putt,. IVIiI,II CI3IA 1.) MAMA lii tale
country placed himself at a distance of only 14 miles from
the moon, and saw everything in the moon which could be
seen at a distance of 14 miles on the terrestrial lobe—yet,
even that, the power of the telescope, was less in its con-
sequences than the power exercised by him who had mastered
decimal notation. And, whilst on the other hand, the micro-
scope enabled them to see objects altogether beyond the reach
of our usual faculties, and to magnify them to an extent
that an invisible creature might be made as large as the
building in which he was addressing them, the decimal
power of diminution and division was even greater than
that of the microscope. Perhaps one of the most extraordi-
nary intellects that ever grasped magnificent thoughts was
that of Archimedes. Aud when Archimedes was told that
the sands of the sea were innumerable, he denied the posi-
)ion, and said, " Not only are the sands of the sea not innu-
merable, but I will find the means of estimating them. Aye !
I will estimate more than the sands of the sea, for I have
discovered a method, the application of a system, by which
(what Greek classics called Cosmos, which was the whole
universe, and which he dared to say many of them were
aware comprised the whole extent of the celestial spheres—
all that the ancients held to extend between earth as the
centre, and the planets and stars as the circumference), if a
globe of that enormous and almost inconceivable size could
be constructed and filled with grains of sand," Archimedes
said, "I have the means of calculating them," and his only
instrument was decimal notation. Now if any one wanted
to see the value of this great power, let him take any other
number than 10, and see how soon he got lost in the at-
tempt to advance. Let him take 2, and go on multiplying
it into itself. Well, twice 2 was was 4 ; four times 4 was
16 ; sixteen times 16 was 256 ; but it would take a very
sharp youth indeed to tell what 256 multiplied by itself be-
came, even if they limited themselves to the force of what
was called fifth power. Take 3 and the result was the same,
and when they came to the third or fifth power, he doubted
if many could make the calculation without the aid of a
slate, and the devotion of some time to the subject. It was
not only a phrase, but the decimal system had approved
itself so much to the common sense of the community,
that they invariably employed it in the ordinary every day
phraseology of life. The Spaniard said, in a complimentary
way, " May you live a thousand years," and the kind
mother said to her children, " I will give you a million of
kisses." If they looked through the Bible they would find
that decimal points were constantly occurring, and that de-
cimals were much more frequently found than any other
numbers. Look, for instance, at 100 ; it is of very frequent
occurrence, and look for 101, and perhaps you will not find
it all. Look for 10, and it is found in a prodigious number
of places, but neither 9 or 11 was of frequent employment.
The Greeks, or what were called the classical nations, were
undoubtedly the most advanced, and they bad gone so far as
to find efficient characters to represent as many as eight
numbers. They could reach the point of recording
99,999,999, and it was at this point Archimedes took up the
question to which I have referred. The Romans did not
go so far as the Greeks. The Greeks used the word muriados,
which we translate myriad, and in the most ancient writers it was
generally found to represent something immense, and not
defined, and in the progress of time it became a definite
term, and myriads employed by itself was the highest point
to which the Greeks ordinarily reached; the highest number
that was taught in their schools. That was the point from
which Archimedes started ; and if we take this decimal
point of a myriad, 10,000, and multiply it by itself, which
makes the million, and multiply this million by itself until
billions come, and trillions, quadrillions, and centrillions, there
is no amount to which I cannot reach. Nothing but the
decimal system would enable our astronomers to calculate
the distance of the heavenly bodies. It would be perfectly
impossible to do so by any other form of nota-
tion; but by that means they were aware that calculations
had become so accurate astronomers had been enabled, by the
decimal system, to go up to what was called the 24tu state,
and there was scarcely a distance, or scarcely an unit that
escaped human sagacity, ,and probably one of the noblest
results of the power of numbers was that which enabled two
or three individuals, c6ntemporaneously, to make a great
discovery by the art of decimal calculation, and to announce
to the world that unless there were a planet far beyond
what the knowledge of ancient times extended to, and a
planet unknown even to modern discovery, it was impos-
sible that certain appearances of the Heavenly bodies could
be accounted for; and so correct were the calculations of Mr.
Adams in this country, and of M. Veriere in France, they
announced that at a certain time it was impossible that a
planet should not exist in a particular locality. They were
aware that having announced that a
,philosopher in Ger-
many had the fortune to discover the new planet Neptune in
the very spot where it was announced it must necessarily be,
that was one of the great triumphs of decimal arithmetic.
He mentioned that the Roman notation was very imperfect, and
many of them knew they had no higher number in their lan-
guagethan centum and mu le,loo and 1,000. The word million
was of modern origin; it was introduced on the breaking up
of the Roman empire, by the Italians ; meaning nothing
nothing more or less than a large mill. A great many
ancient nations used their alphabets as a means of enume-
ration, and of course those alphabets were very limited in
their powers. The nation that first conceived the idea—he
spoke not of speculations of great philosophers, solitary men
such as he had referred to—but the first nation that pub-
lished a decimal system and understood it were the Orien-
tals, and particularly the Bhuddists, and those who employed

THE NORTHERN DAILY TIMES

the language derived from the Sanscrit. Ile would give
them a notion of the manner in which an idea was conveyed
to the ancient Orientals of enorniotts numbers, by explaining
what was their theory of what was called the existence of
Bhudda. They knew, perhaps, it was a belief amongst the
Bhuddists that there had been a succession of gods, who,
from time to time, had ruled the earth, and they held that
human beings, by adequate devotion, and an enormous
amount of virtue, might himself be beatified, and so
become a deity.; Now, what was the first process ?
They had laid down as a principle that for a
certain number of years, a nian 'Mist keep himself
holy and sinless, but of those millions of years they had
laid the groundwork in a most extraordinary calculation,
namely, that if there were a large cubic mass of
granite, and if once in 100,000 years a being were to pas 3
over it clad in light muslin garments, that man passing over
it must cause ascertain amount of attritition, and wear
away a Certain portion of stone ; and they supposed that
this being was to pass over this stone once in 100,000 years,
and they.p said by passing over it a certain portion of stone
would be removed, and the first starting point would be
when the enormous mass of granite should be reduced to
the size of a grain of sand. Well, having got this for a
starting point, then they go on to say when millions and
millions of those periods had passed, the individual would
be reputed to deification. He mentioned this as one of
those. most extraordinary attempts by which our finite facul-
ties liad endeavoured to reach what wa.s:infinite and by
which the instructors of the people had sought to give them
some notion of infinite knowledge. Next to the discovery of
the enormous decimal power to which he had referred, the
introduction of the Arabic numerals was probably the great-
est benefit conferred on dvilisation. Ike „spoke of Roman
numerals, with which most of themwere Familiar, and they
perhaps knew of what those consisted. They took the first
point of 10, which was an X ; they cut it in two, and of it
they made 5. At the next stage they took the next decimal
point, which was 100, and they perhaps knew the form of
the ancient C, which was not rounded as we should write it.
This they again cut in two, and thcx made it 50, and they
took the next stage, which Was, having got 2 5, 10, 50, 100,
they took the next Stage, whiCh was the highest, to which
they reached mu le, . and according to the old form they
divided it into two, which made 500. But nnneeivo tho
difficulty ur nailing up a sum-if the business were addition,
or subtracting a sum if subtracting were work, with only
the Roman numerals. Nothing could be more complicated
or more confused, and the consequence Was they newer found
high numbers introduced amongst the classic writings of
Rome. There was some obScurity about the period in
which what we Called. Arabic numerals; Mit which ought
to be called Indian numerals, for the Arabs themselves
called them Indian-there was some obscurity about the
period at which they were first known, but there were traces
of them in the fifth and sixth centuries, and with Arabic
writers they are often found in the tenth and eleventh. We
owed them to the Arabs whO introduced them into Spain,
and in the thirteenth and fourteenth century they made
their way into the commercial accounts of Italy, and in the
fifteenth and sixteenth they obtained very general accepta-
tion throughout the civilised world. The power of the
Arab numerals consisted in this, that with those 9 figures which
were called units, all they had to, do, in order to increase and
augment or to diminish their value, was to place them in a
position, and this, which arithmeticans called the power of
place, was in fact the great power of the Arabian numerals ;
by placing them to the right or the left they were able to
record any conceiveable amount, and this with those of
numerals alone. This was in fact a great secret of this
enormous arithmetical power. They took, for instance 1,
and added 0 to it and it became 10, another 0 aud it became
100, and by continuing to add noughts to this simple de-
ment, they, lost themselves in amounts which language could
scarcely afford the power of expressing. He (Dr. Bowring)
observed that it was expected he ghould say something with
respect to rotation and the prevalence of the decimal system
in China. Ho believed it had been in China not only of in-
finite use, but of infinite comfort, and one of the most valua-
ble instruments of education which had ever been held by
an instructer or introduced into a school. They carried their
inquiries very far; and a Chinaman, by the employment of
those five figures, could, by the decimal system, reckon up
100,000. Every figure was made to represent the nine
digits, the nine primary numerals, and the way in which he
made 9 was, he began by the little finger, and counted the
joints, and reckoned 1,2, 3,4, 5,6, 7,8, 9. For
the three first he counted the joints up one way,
for the throe last he counted the same joints
the other way, up and down, whilst for the middle figures,
4,4, d, he counted the joints on the other side. Having
accomplished 10 by his little finger, he goes on to hundreds,
at the next, which he called the ring finger, and that re-
presented 100, 200, 300, 400, 500, 600, 700, 800, 900, and
then he proceeded to the third, finger, and then on this mul-
tiplied thousands ; and by piecisely the same process he goes
up again to 1,000, 2,000, 3,000, 4,000, and so on to 10,000,
and next, as he before told them, to 100,000, and this was
no more or less than the application of the decimal system ;
but if he employed his right hand as well as his left, it was
quite clear he could go to what was called the fifth power
further in this manner of calculation, and reckon millions,
eumais, gnat/ 'act, bLLLL, WU, NIVr,
by a simple application of the decimal systeni, and of this
valuable instrument which the Divine Being had given to
them all ; and all he shikild recommend his friend Mr.
Brown to do, if he found any difficulty in convincing a man
of the enormous value of this decimal system, was really to
bold up his ten fingers, and show what a wonderful mystery
was solved by their use, what difficulties were got over, and
what marvellous accounts might be reckoned up. In China
all the young people were very fond of arithmetic, and ad-
mirably did they learn it. He ventured to say they learned
more in a month than could be learned in an English school
in a year. They did not trouble themselves with the non-
Bence of compound addition, compound subtraction, com-
pound multiplication, and division. What did it mean ?
Could anything be conceived more barbarian than the idea
of taking one column and adding it up, and dividing it by
four, which we call farthings, aud then another column,
which we call pence, adding that up and dividing it by 12,
calling them shillings, and then they added up another
column and divided it by 20, which they called pounds ; and
they did not divide them at all, but they went on adding
hundreds, thousands, and millions. (Applause.) He recol-
lected a speech of Mt. Brown's which he had. read, and it
reminded him of what he had heard in his boyhood repeated
a hundred times, under the instruction of their nonsensical
system :-
"Multiplication is my vexation,
Division is twice as bad,
The Rule of Three it puzzles me,
And Fractions set me mad."
(Cheers and laughter.) He hoped the time was not far
off when they should get rid of all this vexation and non-
sense, and introduce a system which is universal in China,
and not only in China, but in a great part of the civilized
world. He (Dr. Bowring) had the pleasure of making his
friend, Mr. Brown, acquainted with a simple instrument
employed by all schools in China, and by which all their
calculations were made. It was exceedingly simple, and
was the application of the principle he had mooted to them.
The instrument was called Livampoa, and meant a calculat-
ing board or platter, and there were balls which moved along.
The lowest ball represented units, and they went on in order
representing, hundreds, thousands, hundreds of thousands,
and millions. By means of thisinstrument all calculations
were made with the greatest possible facility, and he (Dr.
Bowring) stated before the committee of the House of Com-
mons, of which his honorable and excellent friend, Mr, Brown
was the chairman, of whom he ventured to say, if he suc-
ceeded in introducing the decimal system, he would be one
of the greatest possible benefactors that this country had
ever seen. (Hear, hear.) He (Dr. Bowring) stated to
him that he had scarcely ever detected an inaccuracy in
any account, whether they were the large accounts which he
kept on behalf of the government, or the small accounts
which he kept for the petty expenditure of his household,-
hewarcely ever detected, in fact never detected, an error in
in the accounts kept by the Chinese with the assistance of
this abacus; on the contrary if a case occurred in which his
accounts did not agree with those of his servants and clerks,
he found, without any exception he was in the wrong, and
that they were in the right. Nothing really can
be
.more absurd than the whole system of British
accountancy. When the governor of the Bank of England
was introduced to the committe he was desired to give some
explanation of the ancient way in which the bank carried on
its calculations in order to estimate the value of an ingot of
gold. New acts of parliament have regulated the various
conditions by which the value was to be ascertained, and
the first condition was that, in order to be what was called
standard, it should have two pads in twenty-four of alloy;
and then came an act of parliament which declared that,
being brought to this standard of purity, or rather impurity,
it should be sold by a special form of weight, called troy
weight, by the pounds, ounces, pennyweights, and grains
troy ; and then another act of parliament declared that it
was to be paid for at the rate of a 17s. 100. per oz. troy.
Now if any of them wanted, with comfort to themselves, to
make an agreeable calculation, he recommended them to
fan that some friend had remitted to them from California
or Australia an ingot of gold, and they would say to this
ingot of gold, inasmuch as no gold was ever produced by
nature at the standard required by law, they would suppose
this ingot was one-twelfth under or over the standard, and
it should weigh 21bs. 2oz. 2 pennyweights and 2 grains, and
it should be paid for as he mentioned at 775. lop., and he
would be a very clever fellow who would tell him the value
of the ingot. He did not mean to say it could not be done
by an intelligent youth, but no youtb, however intelligent,
would be able to make out such a sum-a sum which was of
hourly and daily occurrence in the Bank of England without
an enormous amount of labour. And he thought the gover-
nor of the Bank of England stated they had been obliged, the
necessity of the thing forced them to adopt the decimal
system, and there has been no confusion such as there would
have been had the calculations not been made in decimals.
Sir John Herschell, who gave very valuable evidence, stated
adulhwi
system,
aeriad tdso umtih
n npm difficult
referencewoet
fact,aayr
sneo da decimals;aba ns d many
absurd,
oi nt t allohr
as t
bw hisa da s
done, 1
tc
al
ta t
hri calculations
nn s
had
away of
f bme
eo
fnmr
escapinge
mn.t , andwhat
fhraodm
beenth e
taannoyanceinsagTutopriadoi wiser of this
a and
d non-decimalbe
tter
course. system,
wasan dn that a
only
nhl
ye
There
nee udw:vadaivslsb,e
ianrd,
tpuh shillings,ope uoydeuseds;teaarntnlbdidno
sterling; then
wordeontuhc
neep,dnootuthfhnaaedtpr
there
what
caries' weight. Nobody knew where he was. They used the

word hundred weight. One would suppose that a cwt. was
1001bs. It was n..) such thing; it was 1121bs. They said a
quarter of a cwt. If a party saw this nuniter employed,
and had not been initiated into the labyrinths of their sys-
tem, would suppose a quarter of a cwt. was 281bs. But so
it was declared to be. Then with respect to pounds. Why,
he had been inquiring in different places with respect to
pounds, and he found pounds moving up from 12 to 24 oz.
So strange and so ridiculous were the usages of the country.
What was meant by a dozen in our language. He went
into one shop and he was told 12; he went into a baker's
and was told 13. What was meant by a stone ? The other
day, at Leeds, he inquired about a stone, and found there
were stones that weighed from 6to 181bs. It was quite
certain that they ought to get out of this absurd system;
they had had quite enough of those nonsensical usages
amongst them. Would it be believed that down to the reign
of George the Third, public accounts were kept on
what were called tallies. They scarcely knew what a
tally was. A tally was a stick, generally a piece of hazel
wood, and a man brought a. certain amount of money to the
exchequer, and then the tally-,keeper brought in a piece of
hazel wood, and for £l,OOO a large notch was cut, and so
many large notches for thousands, a smaller notch for hun-
dreds, a notch smaller than that was cut for £lO, and then
smaller ones for tinitg, and a smaller one again for shillings,
and so on down to pence, and farthings, and then the tally
was split in two, and the man went away with one half, and
the other was left in the exchequer • and if there was any
question about the accounts, the party was obliged
to come with his stick, and, if found correct, the ac-
counts were perfectly in order. (Cheers and laughter.)
This state of things continued down to the reign of George
lll—ay and down to William IV, the accounts of the
the exchequer were kept by Roman numerals, and in dog
French and Latin. Ay, and no wonder, for no less a man
than Lord Grenville wrote a euriouiT letter to the treasury to
say he meant to persevere in the old system. He said, "if
we give up the numerals we won't understand the accounts
at all." (Laughter.) This was the reason g,iven for per-
severing in a system worthy of savages, and which, they
would observe, originated in a One when nobody could read
or write. But; however, they did grow somewhat wiser in
the course of time, and they had Wonted in the exchequer
the sensible system which merchants had taught to gsvern-
ment. (Hear, hear.) The system of decimal coinage to
which his friend had called the attention of parliament and
of the public, had made wonderful way in the world ; and
it was a comfort to know that the plain system which Mr.
Brown and he (Dr. Bowring) most cordially concurred in
recommending, and had been approved by the unanimous
vote of this committee of which Mr. Brown was the chair-
man. The system was due of extreme simplicity. It was
in fact that which was, at this nienlenti in use in the greater
part, he ventured to say, of the civilized world, There
were two decimal systems which prevailed in the world, one
which divided the unit of account, and the other which
divided the unit of account into hundreds, but with the
decimal system of course. In either case it descended from
mines td cdntunisi from thousands to hundreds, or it mounted
up from centums to mikes if that were found most conve-
nient. Now, in China, the systerti was a counter part of
what they desired to see introduced here. All accounts in
China, except their accounts amongst foreigners, were paid
in what was called pure silver, of which an ounce was di-
vided into a thousand parts, and each ounce of silver of a
thousand parts usually formed one of the elements of
accounts in China. The system of dividing what was
called the integer into a thousand parts, prevails throughout
the whole of the Chinese empire ; also in the large
empire of Japan and its dependencies, It had also
been adopted in Portugal and the Brazils, and what
his friend proposed, and what had been sanctioned
by the unanimous opinion of the committee, was that every
pound sterling should be divided into a thousand parts.
That did not touch the value of our gold and silver, and the
only part of our currency whdse value was affected by it was
copper, and the only change would be, so far as he could see,
a considerable benefit to the public, inasmuch as instead of
48 farthings for a shilling they would get 50, and instead of
24 for sixpence they would get 25; when the farthing repre-
sented the thousand part of a pound, instead of the nine
hundred and sixtieth, all the work was accomplished, and
they had a perfect deehrial system. Some nations had
adopted, as they were aware, a division into cents, That
was the case in France, in Belgium, and in many of the
states of Italy. They generally had a piece of the value of
about 10d., which they divided, for convenience, into a
hundred parts, and inasmuch as the hundred part of 10d.
gave a very small coin; it was not necessary to pursue the
decimal system farther ; it was not necessary to divide the
coin into miles. In the united States, though they have
retained much of our phraseology for old words, have a great
hold on the public mind (they employ the word shilling for
different values in different places) ; they had adopted the
decimal system of which the dollar was the ground work,
and that was divided into 100 parts. Now, it is a very
remarkable fact, that connected with the emancipation of all
the Spanish-American states—l speak of all that part of
America formerly subject to Spain—every one of them, imp
mediately on establishing its emancipation and its liberty
"TT - •which -I—"'
a opte t e decimal system he had been recommend-
ing; and no one; he was certain, who had been connected
with commercial affairs but must have been struck with the
facility with which all accounts were kept, examined and
audited, would come in a decimal form. The state of things
in this country, the difficulty of making calculations
with Um system was so great, that he
remembered some years ago, Notts's—. in tb.e public ac-
counts to the amount of many millions sterling \lei t, an_
stroyed, and the public accountants all discharged from re-
sponsibility, inasmuch as it was impossible to go through
the calculations connected with a system so strange and so
involved. He hoped the time was not far distant, when to
make a niistake in ad account would be a great opprobrium.
That was not the case now, and happy Was the person, who
in the present day, could go to market and by the principle
of pence and farthings, and the multiplication and division
of pence and farthings, enter into a contract in any way,—
happy was that person if he could return home and calcu-
late' whether he had paid what was just and right or not. Now
having given them an hours talks and lie hoped suggested
some topics for their consideration, he had to thank them;
and he hoped his excellent friend might have the reward
of seeing the noble purpose which he had proposed to him-
self made the law of the land. (Applause.)
Mr. W. BROWN said, he had it on good authority, that
one fifth of the time now spent in making calculations would
be saved by decimal system. This was very important to
youth, and he thought before leaving, he would make the
communication; He then called for another cheer for their
friend Dr. Bowring, which Was heartily responded to, and
the proceedings terminated.

Dr. BOWRING lectured on the same subject in the even-
ing, at eight o'clock, in the Mechanics' Institute. The at-
tendance, though good, was not very numerous. The chair
was occupied by William Brown, Esq,, Ma, for South
Lancashire,
The CHAIRMAN, in introducing Dr. Dowring, said that
that gentleman had attended there on that evening at great
personal inconvenience, and that no one probably in the
United Kingdom was better qualified to lecture on the sub-
ject of decimal coinage than he was. The Chairman, in
conclusion, briefly pointed out the advantages of the deci-
mal system; and expressed a hope that Government Might
soon be induced to adopt it.
On the conclusion of the lecture, which was loudly ap-
plauded throughout,
Mr. MACILVEBN briefly addressed the meeting, and enu-
merated the leading disadvantages attendant on our present
system of enumeration; and then showed how much the
decimal system would facilitate the education of children in
arithmetic.
Mr. Gtoitan ota T.C., moved that the thanks of the
meeting be given to Dr.i Bowring.
Mr. THORNLEY, M.P., for Wolverhampton, seconded the
motion, and in doing so, bore testimony to the superiority of
of the decimal system, and hoped that it would be ere long
generally adopted throughout the country. It would not
only be an individual but a national gain,.
The motion was carried by acclamitien.
Dr. BOWRING then expressed his acknowledgments, after
which the meeting seoaMted.