Elementary arithmetic, with brief notices of its history... by Robert Potts.

24

WEIGHTS AND MEASURES.

inconvenience in the use of them. He believes that the French system
would not suit the habits of the people of this country; but being
guided by no broad or symmetrical principle, but simply by the convenience of things and the use of them, he prefers the existing system,
and declares he does not see how the decimal subdivision is to be
carried through, as it is limited, and unsuited to the wants of retail
trade. And that any interference of Government for compelling the
use of foreign measures in the ordinary retail business of the country
would be intolerable; that they could not enforce their penal laws in
one instance in a thousand, and in that one it would be insupportabl
oppressive. He admits that there should be a legal power to use decimal
parts of anything, because that in different trades and manufactures
there are different measures used on the one hand and different
weights on the other, which have been adopted by custom on account
of their convenience. Such divisions, he adds, are likely to be adopted
in other trades and manufactures, whenever advantages of a practical
nature can be shown. And further, the reference to the different
parts of any scale of weights and measures is made by different
persons and for different purposes; and the various parts of any one
scale are not usually combined in the practice of trades or of manufactures. He also remarks, it must be remembered, that there is no
country which interferes so little as this country does with the education of the people, or with their internal affairs. The rule in this
country is, that the people should act for themselves, but the rule of
foreign countries is that their paternal government should act for the
people. This makes all the difference between a people which is selfhelping and one which is not. The object of legislation on weights
and measures is to prevent fraud and misunderstanding, and in no
case is the legislature of this country justified in interfering in a
contract between man and man, except for the protection of the
ignorant and the weak.
The leading journal of England of the date 9 July, 1863, thus
supports the views of the Astronomer Royal:-'" From a division in
the House of Commons yesterday, it appears we are seriously
threatened with a complete assimilation of all our weights and
measures to the French system. Three years are given to unlearn all
the tables upon which all our buying and selling, hiring and letting,
are now done. Three years are supposed to be amply sufficient for
undoing and obliterating the traditions of every trade, the accounts
of every concern, the engagements of every contract, and the habits
of every individual. But we very much doubt whether the general
shopkeepers, who take possession of the corners of our small streets,
or the greengrocers, will be able in three years to translate their
accounts into decas, hectos, kilos, myrias, steres, and litres, me'tres,
millimetres, centimetres, and the hundred other terms extracted by our
ingenious neighbours from Latin or Greek, as may happen to suit
their purposes. Is the House of Commons, then, really prepared to
see the votes, the reports, the returns of the revenue, the figures of
the national debt, all run up in paper francs, and actually paid in gold
Napoleons?"
In 1864 was passed an Act to render permissive the use of the
French metric system of weights and measures.1 The preamble
I When Mr. Ewart's Bill went into Committee in the House of Commons, on
Mlay 4th, 1864, it fell dead, when one speaker expressed his desire to see an example