Taylor.] OOO 1-^^^ 21, 



The economy of time and labor wbich the system of octonary compu- 

 talion would infuse throughout the myriad commercial details daily en- 

 tering into the life of a busy and enterprising people, cannot be estimated, 

 and could not easily be exaggerated. The popular wonder would be no 

 smaller under the daily workings of this wiser system, that decimals 

 could have prevailed so many centuries — than is our wonder now that 

 the demands of trade could possibly have been satisfied by the awkward 

 and complex Roman scale of numeration. 



The objections naturally brought against any disturbance of the exist- 

 ing order of accountancy (backed on the other hand by the indolent and 

 dilatory plea that we and our ancestors from earliest time have found it to 

 answer quite "well enough") are precisely those which have uniformly 

 opposed and retarded the introduction of every improvement. We are 

 informed by Sir John Bowring, in his interesting sketch of the Ex- 

 chequer system of England, that in quite recent times. Lord Granville 

 strongly resisted the abolition of the Latin phraseology, and the substitution 

 of the Hindoo numerals for the Roman, in the keeping of the public 

 accounts, on the ground that the continuance of the accustomed system 

 was necessary to preserve the comprehension of preceding records !* 



The only question upon the subject that can be acknowledged as worthy 

 of discussion, is that which regards the beneficial character of the revolu- 

 tion. " Is, or is not, the change proposed a real improvement?" If it be 

 — if it be not onlj^an iiuprovement, but of all projected schemes the best — 

 then we assert the bolder logic — Us adoption is only a question of time ! 

 Prejudice, timidity or indolence, insensibility to the interest of the future, 

 or superstitious reverence for the gray-haired follies of the past, may each 

 or all oppose their inefiectual resistance ; they may indeed postpone for a 

 century or two the benefit to be enjoyed ; they may indeed throw in the 

 scale the added labor of accumulated work to be undone, but what is 

 y best" shall surely, in the end, secure its empire. 



To the objection urged by some that the advantages to result are too 

 remote, and that even were the new arithmetic now inaugurated, the 

 present generation could not expect to have the full and peaceful enjoy- 

 ment of its alleged conveniences, we would reply that such has been the 

 case with every really great reform. The rewards of far-reaching bene- 

 factions are never for the present. We are in possession now of many 



* " It is indeed scarcely credible, that the perplexing and entangled manner of keep- 

 ing accounts by the Roman numerals in the same barbarous style which was practiced 

 before the Norman Conquest, was maintained at the Excliequer almost down to the 

 present day ; and the introduction of the English language and the Arabic numerals 

 was successfully resisted by no less a personage than Lord Granville, on the ground that 

 if the barbarous usages of our ancestors were reformed, it would be difficult to under- 

 stand the accounts, and the records of departed time ; and hence he argued for the 

 necessity of perpetuating a system of complication, confusion and imperfection, not 

 on the common plea of the superior wisdom of our ancestors, but in full acknowledg- 

 ment and appreciation of the ignorance of the custom which was originally instituted, 

 and which had continued to reign triumphant among the Exchequer records" (Bow- 

 ring's Decimal System, Chap, vii, page 124). 



