364 Practical Objections to the French Metre. 



The objections urged at the top of page 303, against the 

 French system of measures, are too vaguely expressed, for me 

 to be sure that I understand their object; but this I know, from 

 conversing with various intelligent Frenchmen, and with En- 

 glish engineers and artisans who have been much in France, 

 that the practical objection to the new system is, that for 

 lengths it furnishes no convenient portable measure. A rod or 

 rule the length of a metre (of 39*37 inches nearly, of our mea- 

 sure) even if it were not too long, open, and too clumsy, when 

 folded*, to be carried about in the pocket, always ready for 

 use, is inapplicable, except in a few trades like drapers, mer- 

 cers, &c; and as to the deci-metre, of 3*94 inches long, what 

 can be done with it, as a measuring rod or rule ? singly it is 

 far too short; and if three or four, or else six or seven of these 

 decimetres are added or joined together, in order to produce 

 rules, equally adapted to be carried in the pocket, and alike 

 convenient, in the essential act of measuring, with the one- or 

 the two-foot rules of France or England, how very inconvenient 

 and liable to error must be the counting or adding-up men- 

 tally, several successive applications of such a rule, in the 

 measurement of the lengths continually occurring in the arti- 

 san's practice, as of 20 or 30 feet lengths, for instance ? In 

 short, the difficulty is an insuperable one. 



Had the terrestrial circumference been divided into 

 10,000,000 parts, instead of the cjuadrantal meridian thereof, 

 and the metre been assumed at 4 times its present length ; in 

 such case a jointed rule ISf of our inches nearly, might have 

 been carried in the pocket, and been used with not much more 

 loss of time or inconvenience than attend the use of our two- 

 foot rules ; but, as it is, I fully concur with those who framed 

 our late Act, in retaining the foot measure, as settled in 1760; 

 and I wish they had been equally attentive to retain the capacity 

 .ofa cylinder of 18iinchesdiameterand 8 inches deep (the bushel 

 settled in 1697), and made it the unit of measuring vessels f. 

 That phantom, " the nature of things," would be still more 



as few decimal places as may be. Which gallon, for avoiding confusion, 

 should not be called Winchester, because of the 282 cubic inches, long ago 

 enacted and used in guagings for ale, beer, and vinegar; neither should it 

 be called " Imperial" (=277'274in.), but British should, I submit, be used as 

 the prefix to the gallon, quart, pint, gill, &c. of this system. 



* The same objection applies to the English yard, as nut being a practi- 

 cal measure, equally with the fool ; it is suggested, therefore, that in an 

 amended Act, the foot, one-third of the yard, defined in clause 1 of the pre- 

 sent Act, should be more expressly named as a standard, or unit of lengths, 

 for defining other measures, in clauses 1, 2, 7, 8, and 14. 



-f- Where a gallon vessel is once used in measuring goods, there cannot 

 be a doubt but the bushel is so used a hundred, nay perhaps a thousand 

 times ! 



absurdly 



