732 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



Sir Frederick also furnishes an extensive extract, giving the 

 views of the first Napoleon on the subject of reform in weights 

 and measures. Many of the stock arguments are repeated, and if 

 they had not been thrashed over long ago it would be perfectly 

 easy to take them up one by one and show their absurdity. An 

 entire lack of any really accurate knowledge of the subject and 

 an absence of any sort of conception of the simplest metrological 

 principles are shown in a single quotation : " A toise, a foot, an 

 inch, a line, a point, are fixed portions of extension, which the 

 imagination conceives independent of their relations to one an- 

 other ; if, then, we ask for the third of an inch, the mind goes into 

 instant operation. The length called an inch is divided into three 

 parts. By the new system, on the contrary, the mind has not to 

 divide an inch into thirds, but a metre into a hundred and eleven 

 parts." It is difficult to properly characterize such utter non- 

 sense; but, fortunately, the French people, who are to-day the 

 leaders in the world's metrology, were not obliged to take their 

 science, as they were most other things, from the first consul. 

 A group of the most distinguished Frenchmen of any period had 

 perfected this system, even in the very midst of the bloody revo- 

 lution which closed the last century, and when their final report 

 was made in an address to the legislative chambers by the cele- 

 brated La Place, the event was described by Adams as a " specta- 

 cle at once so rare and so sublime . . . that not to pause for a 

 moment, were it even from occupations not essentially connected 

 with it ; to enjoy the contemplation of a scene so honorable to 

 the character and capacities of our species, would argue a want of 

 sensibility to appreciate its worth. This scene formed an epoch 

 in the history of man. It was an example and an admonition to 

 the legislators of every nation and of all after times." 



Mr. Spencer also quotes from an auditor who had to go over 

 £20,000 of accounts, and who was " very thankful that it was not 

 in francs." At first blush it seems entirely natural and credit- 

 able to him as an Englishman to rejoice that his twenty thousand 

 is in pounds sterling rather than francs ; but, after all, his remark 

 is only a reflection of that not uncommon English sentiment that 

 the imperial monetary system is more perfect than any other in 

 all the wide world. This sentiment is doubtless the outgrowth of 

 national pride and intellectual inactivity ; it is not entertained by 

 the majority of the more thoughtful and scholarly Englishmen, 

 and, furthermore, it is in every respect false. It is unnecessary 

 to consume time in quoting the opinion of England's most distin- 

 guished scholars, to show that this is not simply an example of 

 American boasting, but I will venture to illustrate by one or two 

 additional extracts from De Morgan. In his arithmetical appen- 

 dix on Decimal Money he says : " Of all the simplifications of 



