which I do not
feel certain that it will be well for us to introduce or recommend,
and with regard to which I have my doubts whether it will be received
with unanimous or hearty approval.

In fact, gentlemen, all nations that have adopted the Julian and
Gregorian systems of time-reckoning have necessarily accepted their
consequences, and these consequences are, as Rome told us in the time
of Caesar and in that of Gregory XIII, that we must reckon our days
according to certain fixed dates; some part of the world had to reckon
their dates before all the rest, and as Rome consented that countries
situated to the east of it should reckon their date before it and
countries situated to the west after it, it is evident that both
reckonings had to meet at some point on some meridian, which was and
could be no other than the anti-meridian of Rome. Nature itself seems
to have lent its sanction to this, since the anti-meridian of Rome
crosses no continent, and, probably, no land whatever.

Let us suppose, for the sake of illustration, that it were agreed to
abandon the Gregorian system of reckoning at a given moment, and to
adopt another; that it were agreed to abandon it at all points on the
globe when the hour should be twelve o'clock at noon at Greenwich, on
the first day of January, 1885; and let us suppose that for historical
or scientific purposes we were interested in knowing exactly how long
the Gregorian system had been in use. Is it possible to ascertain
this? It is; and very easily. Using that system of universal
time-reckoning which it is proposed to establish, but logically
referring it to the origin of that cosmopolitan reckoning which really
exists, that is to say, to the anti-meridian of Rome, we shall find
that 1885 years have been reckoned according to the Gregorian system,
plus the difference of longitude between the anti-meridians of
Greenwich and Rome. Nothing is more certain than this, and there is no
other way of solving the problem. As I have already shown, when the
Gregorian correction was made, the day which, according to the old
mode of reckoning, would have been the 5th of October, was called the
15th of October, 1582; the countries situated to the east of Rome had,
however, previously begun to reckon according to the new system
(previously in absolute time I mean,) and the countries situated to
the west adopted it successively afterwards. Now, then, as that
portion of the globe which lies to the eas