1872.] The Decimal System. 299 
tenths of our fellow subjects are tied and bound toa multitude 
of common English facts, inextricably entangled with the soil, 
the village, and the town. They have a farm or garden of 
so many acres or roods; they dwell so many miles from the 
village, railway, or county town; they live by selling 
quarters of corn, bushels of potatoes, gallons of milk, or 
pounds of meat; their wives buy clothing for themselves 
and their children by the yard; they purchase the food of 
the household in pounds, and its luxuries in ounces; they 
measure their drink by pints, and their bread is bought in 
quartern or half quartern loaves. All these things are no 
more than names to people who never have occasion to con- 
sider any but large quantities ; but to the middle and lower 
classes they are the elements of daily existence; they are the 
measures, not of mere pecuniary transactions, but of their 
resources, possessions, wants, and enjoyments. A quartern 
loaf, for instance, is not so much a thing of a given value; 
for its price may vary; but it is a known quantity of bread, 
good for so much food, and likely to last for such and such 
atime. The cost of a dress isa matter of choice, but not 
So ais size. Ihe rent of an acre of land is a@ variable 
quantity, but in the mind of every farmer an acre represents 
a score of associated realities. It will take a known time to 
plough, it will feed so many sheep, it will take so much 
manure, and so on. What, then, we are asked to do by 
Mr. J. B. Smith and his friends is to take all these people 
out of a world they know, in which all the dimensions, 
relations, and necessities of existence are familiar to them, 
and plunge them into a world in which everything will be 
strange to them, in which all their old bearings will be 
rendered obsolete, in which they will be puzzled every day 
to know where they are standing, how much they are eating 
and drinking, what they are selling, and what they are 
buying. How is a countrywoman to understand how many 
metres she wants for her petticoat, or how many decagrammes 
of milk she must buy for her baby? If the measure could 
be enforced, the mass of the population would be placed, as 
it were, in a new country, with all the daily conditions of 
life uncertain.” 
I must first premise that I knowno more of the argument 
of the writer in the ‘“‘ Times” than what I have learnt from 
this quotation, and any remarks that may be made in this 
article will necessarily refer only to this quotation. 
The writer begins thus:—‘“‘ The esssential inconveniences.” 
From this we are, I think, justified in concluding that he 
goes on to state what he considers to be the strongest 
arguments against the adoption of the metric system. 
