TEE METRIC SYSTEM. 399 



the imposition was laid never really adopted it. The succeeding genera- 

 tions have been gradually losing the memory of the old weights and 

 measures, and the inherent merits of the new system are such that 

 relapse to the old barbarism is now impossible, whatever may be the 

 modifications gradually imposed in practise upon a system of metrology 

 which owed its existence to special creation rather than evolution. The 

 case is quite comparable with the new era of sanitation in Cuba. Yel- 

 low fever has been almost wholly stamped out. The superiority of the 

 new conditions is now recognized, and the Cubans will probably never 

 return voluntarily to the regime of filth which fixed a scourge upon 

 Havana for two centuries. 



Prior to the French revolution various propositions and experi- 

 mental attempts had been made to secure an absolute standard of 

 length. In England Graham had tried to establish the length of a 

 seconds pendulum as a standard, but without permanent success. In 

 France several years were devoted by Delambre and Mechain to the de- 

 termination of the length of an arc of the meridian between Dunkirk 

 and Barcelona. The quadrant as computed from this survey was 

 10,000,000 times the length of the adopted standard, the meter. The 

 outcome was no more absolute than any other product of human skilled 

 labor. The opponents of the metric system have been fond of calling 

 attention to the mistake in computed value of the meter. The labors 

 of Bessel, Schubert and Clarke have established the existence of an 

 error of about one part in 7,000. This means that the meter is shorter 

 than it ought to be by an average hair's breadth; but this small error 

 is quite sufficient to prove that the actual meter is an arbitrary standard. 

 The fact is admitted as readily by the advocates as it is proclaimed by 

 the opponents of the system. The most enthusiastic of these opponents 

 have been the members of a small clique, led by the late Piazzi Smyth 

 of Edinburgh, who claimed to have discovered in the pyramids of Egypt 

 convincing evidence that the British inch is the only absolute unit, a 

 definite fraction of the earth's polar diameter. Such conclusions are 

 quite harmless ; equally unassailable and incapable of proof. The real 

 merit of the metric system is found in its definiteness and simplicity, 

 and not at all in any approximate relation between its fundamental unit 

 and the earth's polar circumference, or any other terrestrial dimension, 

 whatever may have been the intention of its originators. 



The metric system was adopted in France in 1795 and made obli- 

 gatory in I18OI. The change was too sudden for the people and com- 

 promise was found necessary. The full enforcement of the law dates 

 from 1840, and the system has since become gradually and quite thor- 

 oughly established. France is a republic, and the law would long ago 

 have been repealed if good reason for such action existed. At the close 

 of the Franco-German war an important step in the unification of the 



