Britain independent of commerce; or proofs, deduced from an investigation into the true cause of the wealth of nations, that our riches, prosperity, and power are derived from sources inherent in ourselves, and would not be affected, even though our commerce were annihilated. By Wm. Spence.[[522]] 4th edition, 1808, 8vo.
A patriotic paradox, being in alleviation of the Commerce panic which the measures of Napoleon I.—who felt our Commerce, while Mr. Spence only saw it—had awakened. In this very month (August, 1866), the Pres. Brit. Assoc. has applied a similar salve to the coal panic; it is fit that science, which rubbed the sore, should find a plaster. We ought to have an iron panic and a timber panic; and
a solemn embassy to the Americans, to beg them not to whittle, would be desirable. There was a gold panic beginning, before the new fields were discovered. For myself, I am the unknown and unpitied victim of a chronic gutta-percha panic: I never could get on without it; to me, gutta percha and Rowland Hill are the great discoveries of our day; and not unconnected either, gutta percha being to the submarine post what Rowland Hill is to the superterrene. I should be sorry to lose cow-choke—I gave up trying to spell it many years ago—but if gutta percha go, I go too. I think, that perhaps when, five hundred years hence, the people say to the Brit. Assoc. (if it then exist) "Pray gentlemen, is it not time for the coal to be exhausted?" they will be answered out of Molière (who will certainly then exist): "Cela était autrefois ainsi, mais nous avons changé tout cela."[[523]] A great many people think that if the coal be used up, it will be announced some unexpected morning by all the yards being shut up and written notice outside, "Coal all gone!" just like the "Please, ma'am, there ain't no more sugar," with which the maid servant damps her mistress just at breakfast-time. But these persons should be informed that there is every reason to think that there will be time, as the city gentleman said, to venienti the occurrite morbo.[[524]]
SOME SCIENTIFIC PARADOXES.
An appeal to the republic of letters in behalf of injured science, from the opinions and proceedings of some modern authors of elements of geometry. By George Douglas.[[525]] Edinburgh, 1810, 8vo.
Mr. Douglas was the author of a very good set of
mathematical tables, and of other works. He criticizes Simson,[[526]] Playfair,[[527]] and others,—sometimes, I think, very justly. There is a curious phrase which occurs more than once. When he wants to say that something or other was done before Simson or another was born, he says "before he existed, at least as an author." He seems to reserve the possibility of Simson's pre-existence, but at the same time to assume that he never wrote anything in his previous state. Tell me that Simson pre-existed in any other way than as editor of some pre-existent Euclid? Tell Apella![[528]]
1810. In this year Jean Wood, Professor of Mathematics in the University of Virginia (Richmond),[[529]] addressed a printed circular to "Dr. Herschel, Astronomer, Greenwich Observatory." No mistake was more common than the natural one of imagining that the Private Astronomer of the king was the Astronomer Royal. The letter was on the
difference of velocities of the two sides of the earth, arising from the composition of the rotation and the orbital motion. The paradox is a fair one, and deserving of investigation; but, perhaps it would not be easy to deduce from it tides, trade-winds, aerolithes, &c., as Mr. Wood thought he had done in a work from which he gives an extract, and which he describes as published. The composition of rotations, &c., is not for the world at large: the paradox of the non-rotation of the moon about her axis is an instance. How many persons know that when a wheel rolls on the ground, the lowest point is moving upwards, the highest point forwards, and the intermediate points in all degrees of betwixt and between? This is too short an explanation, with some good difficulties.
The Elements of Geometry. In 2 vols. [By the Rev. J. Dobson,[[530]] B.D.] Cambridge, 1815. 4to.