THE METRIC SYSTEM. i 97 



of knowledge from uncivilized times to our own and the breaking 

 down of habits, now going on with accelerated rapidity, he does 

 not share the expectation that the 12-notation "will ever be 

 adopted in practice," the obstacles to the change being too great. 

 But without opposing the metric system as threatening to stand 

 in the way of a more perfect system, he opposes it as intrinsically 

 undesirable, saying : " I think that all that can be done is to make 

 our coinage and measures as little decimal as possible, and our 

 computation as decimal as may be." 



IV. 



From one who every month has to act as auditor, I have re- 

 ceived a letter in which he says : " I had to go over more than 

 20,000 of accounts yesterday, and was very thankful that it was 

 not in francs." 



This statement, coming from a man of business, has suggested 

 to me the question, By whose advice is it that the metric system 

 of weights, measures, and values is to be adopted ? Is it by the 

 advice of those who spend their lives in weighing and measuring 

 and receiving payments for goods ? Is it that the men who alone 

 are concerned in portioning out commodities of one or other kind 

 to customers, and who have every minute need for using this or 

 that division or subdivision of weights or measures, have de- 

 manded to use the decimal system ? Far from it. I venture to 

 say that in no case has the retail trader been consulted. There 

 lies before me an imposing list of the countries that have fol- 

 lowed the lead of France. It is headed Progress of the Metric 

 System. It might fitly have been headed Progress of Bureau- 

 cratic Coercion. When, fifty years after its nominal establish- 

 ment in France, the metric system was made compulsory, it was 

 not because those who had to measure out commodities to cus- 

 tomers wished to use it, but because the Government commanded 

 them to do so ; and when it was adopted in Germany under the 

 Bismarckian regime, we may be sure that the opinions of shop- 

 keepers were not asked. Similarly elsewhere, its adoption has 

 resulted from the official will and not from the popular will. 



Why has this happened ? For an answer we must go back to 

 the time of the French Kevolution, when scientific men were in- 

 trusted with the task of forming a rational system of weights, 

 measures, and values for universal use. The idea was a great one, 

 and, allowing for the fundamental defect on which I have been 

 insisting, it was admirably carried out. As this defect does not 

 diminish its great convenience for scientific purposes, the system 

 has been gradually adopted by scientific men all over the world ; 

 the great advantage being that measurements registered by a sci- 

 entific man of one nation are without any trouble made intelli- 



