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 ship 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 ship depended, worked out by the light of a lantern in a gale of wind off a lee shore, this simple and useful change might at this moment have been in the hands of its tenth Government Commission.