Harding. — Certain Decimal and Metrical Fallacies. 95 



measures (with perhaps the single exception of the typo- 

 graphic standard, the decimahzation of which is impossible) 

 the sole rival of the meter, the sole repi'esentative of a system 

 which has survived the vicissitudes of thousands of years, and 

 which now is in a majority of more than two to one. Again 

 to quote Mr. Giles, the inch-and-foot scale represents — 



The greatest amount of territory by land and sea. 

 The highest rate of increase in population. 

 The greatest wealth. 

 The pre-eminence in commerce. 

 The first place in extent and power of colonisation. 

 The greatest freedom for its individuals. 



The first in philanthropy and improvement in the condition of sub- 

 ject races. 



It is significant that no country has ever voluntarily 

 adopted the meter. It has always been arbitrarily enforced 

 upon the people — in Sicily literally at the bayonet-point. 

 And even under the most rigidly repressive rule the old 

 system often lingers. A writer in the London Engineering 

 World only a few months ago stated that in Prussia, Hun- 

 gary, Hamburg, and Hanover the " fuss " is still used in 

 measurement, and that he could give other instances of the 

 survival of the old standards. 



In France, it is needjess to say, there was no attempt to 

 consult the people as to the change. It is instructive to read 

 what Rees's Cyclopedia (1819) placed on record regarding the 

 introduction of the scheme into that country : — 



That beautiful and scientific theory [this authority says] has not 

 been found unexceptionable in practice. On the contrary, it met with 

 such opposition on account of the Greek and Latin terms and the decimal 

 division that in 1801 the Government allowed the people to use, for a 

 limited time, their own vocabulary of names, applying them to the new 

 standards, which are still retained. And in 1812 a further concession 

 was made by the Imperial Government to the prejudices and habits of 

 the people. They were allowed to continue the ancient vocabulary 

 applied to the new standards with the word usuel added to each : thus, 

 two metres are the toise ustu-lle ; half a kilogramme, the livre tisuelle, 

 &c. ; and these zmits are not divided decimally , but into halves, quarters, 

 and eighths. The long measures are also divided duodecimally. Besides 

 the binary divison of weights, the livre usuelle is divided into ounces, 

 gros, and grains, like the ancient livre, poids de marc. Hence the 

 new ounce and its divisions depart so viridely from the gramme that the 

 proportion cannot be ascertained without a troublesome calculation. 

 Thus, after more than twenty years of troublesome experiment and 

 trial of the metrical system the only advantage that has been gained 

 is that of establishing one common standard, the metre; but uniformity 

 might as well have been obtained by making the ancient toise (so univer- 

 sally known) their standard. 



" Uniformity" being the avowed object, the change of the 

 standard, with all the perplexities it involved, was, as the 

 critic of the Cyclopedia recognised, unnecessary. The one 

 remaining recommendation, then, of the metric system is its 



