Until about 1800 practically every civilization
used non-decimal reckonings of time, weight, distance, and currency. In Europe
at least it is clear that the divisions people found most natural were based on
the number twelve. Vestiges of this still remain today, most of all in the
measurement of time, where we still divide our days into two twelve-hour cycles—indeed
twelfths have an unfair advantage in the calendar because, through God’s
providence, the moon makes twelve cycles a year, no doubt simply to frustrate
the modern rationalists.
In currency, the old European system was the one
of pounds, shillings, and pennies. What the English called a penny was
originally a Roman denarius (French denier, Italian denaro, Arabic dinar),
hence the abbreviation d. for pence
in England until 1971. Twelve pennies make one shilling (Latin solidus, French sou). Twenty shillings make one pound (Latin libra, French livres,
Italian lira). That is, a pound is a
score of dozens: £1 = 20s. = 240d. Peter Spufford, preeminant historian
of medieval currency, remarks, “the habit of counting coins in dozens and scores
of dozens was so ingrained that when a new coin did not coincide neatly with a
multiple of the pre-existing coins, a new system of pounds, shillings, and
pence was automatically constructed on the basis of the new coin”.
This sytem was abolished first, surprise! during
the French Revolution. As the French Revolution became a campaign to stamp out
the Christian Church, so it became a campaign to stamp out the European
tradition itself. One can read with amusement about the failed attempts to
establish a ten-hour day, ten-day week, and so on. But it is less amusing to
learn that our metric system and decimal currency both have their origins in
the French Revolution. They represent the successful conquest of the old
European tradition and feelings and the re-education of man.
The Christian Church never tried to abolish the
European past which she inherited—on the contrary she adopted and baptized much
of what she found in the Europe in which she was born: Roman law (consider the
medieval maxim ecclesia vivit lege romana
‘the Church lives by Roman law’); Greek philosophy (Aquinas, the greatest
Christian philosopher, represents the harmonizing of Greek and Christian
thought); pagan holidays (as is well known).
No, although one steeped in modern cynicism might
look for the new Christian religion to try to wipe out all the impure past,
actually the Christians received and lived by as much of it as they could. This
seems to me the proof that Christians are not and have never been dualists or
world-deniers: the Church really believes grace
perfects nature; that is, the nature of man is what we have to work with.
We don’t deny the nature of man and try to stamp it out, we baptize it; like
the Resurrection led the natural body into a new and fuller life, so the
Christian thing leads everything natural to man into that new life.
Hence the Christian centuries were a
perpetuation, renewal, and over-flowing into new life of the pagan centuries
(Roman and Greek) which went before.
The modern project is wholly different. The
modern project is essentially, in its nature, anti-Christian. I have observed
before that modernization can be defined as the destruction of the Church. Every
stage of ‘development’ in Europe’s last five centuries in the direction we call
modern has been an act of destruction of the Church.
The modern project is equally anti-Man. This is
obvious after what was said above. If the Church took everything that is
natural to man into itself, then to destroy the Church requires destroying what is natural to man. Hence we should look,
at every stage of modernization, for the destruction of things natural and
spontaneous and delightful to man’s nature.
The system of pounds and shillings, like the one
of inches, feet, and miles, was natural and delightful to European man. It had
to be destroyed. The favourite word used to destroy it: ‘arbitrary’. In lying,
go big or go home. The truths on the side of decimalization are that it is more
convenient to write and certain calculations are easier. But the big lie is
that the decimal system is more rational and the old system is arbitrary. The
old system is what generations of people found most useful and rational for
day-to-day exchange! Twelves in fact are much easier to divide up into quarters
and thirds than tens, which only go neatly into tenths, fifths, and halves. But
the daily experience of centuries of Europeans apparently has no authority
whatsoever. ‘Arbitrary.’
Even after the French Revolution led the way in
stomping on human nature, the British, always tenacious in their contrariness
to Continental ways, held onto their pounds and shillings until 1971. The economist E.J. Mishan wrote in
1980:
The case for it in terms
of economic efficiency alone is doubtful. Indeed it is more than doubtful,
since the changeover to a decimal currency (in which one new penny was equal to
2 2/5 old pennies) had the predictable effect of giving a perceptible fillip to
the upward drift of prices. Yet economic efficiency is but one consideration.
There are others, seemingly less tangible but no less potent, of sentiment,
pride, and custom. Pounds, shillings, and pence are not merely convenient units
of account and currency. They are also an essential part of John Bull’s
accoutrements, an extension of Britain’s personality. Our national system of
weights and measures, our pints and yards, our acres and fathoms, which are now
to be thrown into limbo as so much jetsam, are also part of our Anglo-Saxon
heritage. They ring familiar to our ears as church bells. They are resonant
with centuries of British history. They are part of our language and our
literature. ... But on yet another isue of deep national concern, the government
made no pretence even of consulting the feelings of the British people.
The modern world is trying to re-educate us all from the bottom up. It must wipe out the
Christian Church and it is using scorched earth tactics to do it. Give them
nothing to live on, deny them all supplies and food, and do this by burning our
own fields and slaying our own cattle. Hence the modern European state, born in
the French Revolution, proceeds by destroying everything pleasing and
sustaining for the natural life of man, lest it nourish the new life in Christ.
The most deadly assault is on the family; but even such a seemingly trivial
matter as the way we count coins does not escape attention. Oldthinkers unbellyfeel Ingsoc. Everything
old and traditional must be extirminated, everything must be reframed. Everyone
is in need of re-education.
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