THE FARMER'S MAGAZINE. 



409 



WEIGHTS AND MEASURES. 



LECTURE ON THE METRICAL SYSTEM OP WEIGHTS AND MEASURES, AND THE DESIRABLENESS OF ITS BEING 

 ADOPTED BY ALL CIVILIZED NATIONS AS THEIR COMMON STANDARD, READ IN THE COUNCIL ROOM OF THE CHAM- 

 BER OF COMMERCE, BELFAST, ON THE EVENING OF THURSDAY, THE 23rD SEPTEMBER, 1858, 



BY THE REV. JOHN SCOTT PORTER. 



At the request of the Council of the British branch of the 

 " International Association for obtaining a Uniform Decimal 

 System of Measures, Weights, and Coins," I have under- 

 taken to deliver a lecture on the subject, which has been 

 .announced for discussion this evening. I may add, that I 

 am indebted to that society for the use of the specimens and 

 the di;igr.am by which my remarks will be illustrated, and 

 to its valuable publications, especially those by Professor 

 Hennessey and Mr. Yates — copies of which I have placed 

 on the table before me — for many of the facts which I am 

 about to bring forward. As the subject is closely related 

 to the business of trade and manufacture, I have thought 

 the council-room of the Chamber of Commerce a suitable 

 place for uttering what I have to say upon it ; but, as it has 

 also its moral and philosophic aspect, I conceive myself, as 

 a minister of religion, engaged in no unsuitable or unbe- 

 coming occupation, when I venture to lay before those who 

 do me the honour to attend to what falls from me, the cou- 

 cluVons which I have reached, and an outline of the pro- 

 cess by which they have been attained. The subject is not 

 exciting ; it enkindles no party zeal or sectarian interest ; but 

 I trust to show, before the close of this address, that it is 

 calculated to enlist the sympathies and engage the attention 

 of all who wish to advance the welfare of their fellow-men. 

 I would especially desire to turn to it the thoughts of young 

 men engaged in commercial pursuits. Their active life is 

 yet before them ; and I conceive they ought to feel an 

 enlightened desire to secure the adoption of such plans for 

 the conduct of commerce as may render all its operations 

 more definite and easy, and may thus promote not only their 

 own convenience, but the happiness of their race. With- 

 out further preface, I proceed to Jihe discussion of the sub- 

 ject announced— namely, the expediency of adopting an 

 improved system of measures and weights, calculated to 

 become the common standard for the exchange of commodi- 

 ties throughout the whole civilized world, 



I begin with a retrospective glance at the early history 

 of weights and measures. Their introduction is coeval with 

 the dawn of civilization : society may exist without them, 

 but not civilized society. The Laplanders, the Bushmen, 

 the Esquimaux, the Red ludians, have neither weights nor 

 measures ; but the business of a city could not go on for a 

 week without them. Hence we find mention of them at a 

 very early period in the world's history. The dimensions 

 of the ark were given to Noah in cubits ; .and Abraham 

 weighed to Ephron, the Hittite, the silver which was the 

 price of the field and cave of Macphelia, in shekels. The 

 ammah, like the Latin word cubitus (a cubit), by which it is 

 translated, signifies the fore-arm, from the elbow downwards 

 to the point of the fingers—" the cubit of a man," as it is 

 called in Dent. iii. 11. The shekel, like our own English 

 pound (from pondus), denotes, etymologically, "a weight ;" 

 but among the Hebrews, the "shekel of the sanctuary" 

 was defined to be of the weight of twenty ger.ihs (Exod. 



XXX., 13 ; Num. iii. 47 ; Ezek. «lv. 12), that is, of twenty 

 be.ans — for so the word r/erah literally signifies. Let us not 

 despise these rude .ittempts to fix a common and natural 

 standard of measures .and weights. Our own system was 

 originally formed on the very same principle. Silver among 

 ourselves is sold by the ounce, consisting of 480 grains ; and 

 the grain was at first wh.at its name implies — a pickle of 

 dried corn, taken from the middle of the ear. More bulky 

 commodities are often sold by the stone— a term which ex- 

 plains itself, and bespeaks the rudeness of primeval times. 

 In measures of length we have the barley-corn, now never 

 used, except in works of arithmetic, in which it is preserved 

 for the sole purpose, as it would seem, of presenting an 

 additional puzzle to the hapless children who are condemned 

 to drudge at our dreary and unaccountable system of count- 

 ing ; we have the hand .and foot, taken, of course, from the 

 corresponding parts of the human form ; we have the yard, 

 anciently termed the ell {ulma), that is to say, the arm. 

 The word ell is no longer used to signify the arm in common 

 speech, but it is retained in the compound el-bow, which 

 means the bow or bend of the arm. And the depths of the 

 ocean are sounded in fathoms, that is to say, the expanse of 

 the outstretched anna. These are very rough standards of 

 comparison— they fluctuate in size and bulk— in fact, they 

 are seldom exactly equiv.alent in any two individuals ; their 

 employment for the purposes of trade would open a door to 

 continual fraud, .and give rise to perpetual bickerings, which 

 it is the very object of a system of weights and measures 

 to prevent. Accordingly means were early taken to reduce 

 them to some definitely ascertained magnitude, which should 

 be general at least for each neighbourhood. At first the 

 plans employed for this purpose were almost as rude as the 

 errors which they were designed to correct. In France, 

 for example, every province under the old monarchy had its 

 own system of weights, and its own system of measures for 

 lengths, surfaces, and capacities, quite independent of all 

 the rest of the kingdom. Sometimes these standards, thus 

 differing from each other, went by different names in the 

 different provinces, which occasioned considerable incon- 

 venience to traders ; sometimes the standards used in 

 different provinces, and differing from each other in magni- 

 tude, passed by the same name, which led to still greater 

 perplexity. In two, at least, of the largest and most popu- 

 lous provinces of France, it was the custom — which had the 

 force of law— that the standard of length in each seig- 

 neurie, or mauor, should be the arm of the seigneur for the 

 time being. In these districts, the death of a short seig- 

 neur, if succeeded by a son six feet in height, and with an 

 arm proportioned to his height, would ruin half the traders, 

 and make the fortunes of the remainder. All this has now 

 been rectified ; and there is no country in the world that at 

 present enjoys the benefits of a system of weights and mea- 

 sures more philosophical in its conception, more elegant in 

 the relation of its different members, or more convenient in 



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