156 REPOKT — 1864. 



metic and puzzle children •svoiild be got rid of. So witli regard to measures and 

 money — let all the luiits increase by tens, and all goes " merry as a marriage hell." 

 One set of rides wiU apply to the weights, measures, and moneys of all trades and 

 of all nations which use the Arabic figures. With regard to money, we cannot do 

 better than adhere to the sovereign for statistical pui-poses : it is of gold, which is 

 becoming everywhere the standard of value, is the largest unit in use, and is admi- 

 rably suited to measure large values. The florin, and new farthings or mils, of 

 which 100 would make a florin, 1000= £1, are all the moneys of account required. 

 The penny will be 4 farthings, the shilling 50, and no change in the coinage is 

 requu-ed. The Chancellor of the Exchequer will, let us hope, inaugm-ate this 

 reform, which would be an immense boon to all classes that have anything to do 

 ■Rath bills, accounts, and statistics. 



We might decimalize our old weights and measures, but the several ranks of 

 units would not fit well into each other ; the change would give a great deal of 

 trouble, and there is no chance that other nations would adopt it, for this simple 

 reason, that the first nations have had for years the admirable metrical system in 

 use. Our merchants deal with these nations largely, and if we adopt the metre, 

 Russia, America, and om' colonies will adopt it. If England wills it, the whole 

 civilized world vnU. have one system of weights, measures, and money, as it has 

 one system of decunal arithmetic. This system annihilates those ugly pages of 

 Colenso, the compound rules ; so through it, in the words of the highest authority, 

 Professor Barlow, "a child may learn ever^'thing necessary for entering into the 

 common concerns of the world in a month as well and better than in a year under 

 our complicated system"*. 



A Metric Act will be an emancipation act for children, and wiU give them time 

 for higher studies in mathematics. The compoimd rules of arithmetic, English 

 orthography, and Latin verses, are the tasks for which the school-boy is oftenest 

 punished ; and they are the opprobrium of the age. Unlike the truths of science, 

 they can only be flogged into the brains of English boys. Statists should at once 

 make the pound sterling and the metric weights and measures their units. 



In the English market gold and silver are sold by the ounce ; coflfee, tea, tobacco, 

 spices, indigo, silk, cotton, and leather by the pound ; meat by the stone ; sugar, 

 butter, rice, by the hundredweight; coal, iron, copper, tin, lead, palm oil, logwood, 

 hemp, flax, by the ton; wool by the pack. For statistical pui-poses it is convenient 

 to take one unit, the metric ton=a cubic metre of water, and nearly equal to the 

 English ton, to express the imports and exports, and the quantities of all articles 

 sold by weight. 1 his would facilitate comparison. The quantities sold by voliuue, 

 such as wheat, fish, oil, wine, and spirits, might also be expressed by one unit — 

 the metric tun, the bulk of water weighing a metric ton. The qualities and prices 

 of some articles, such as wheat and spirits, are regulated by the weight of equal 

 bulks, or by the specific gra\aty, which is ea.sily expressed as it is the weight of a 

 metric tun of the stuff", when a metric ton is taken for unity. Cloth, linen, calico, 

 and silk, are sold by linear units, which are exceedingly objectionable, and shoidd 

 be convei-ted into square units for statistical pui-poses. 



In mechanics a unit of this kind is used ; a pound weight raised a foot is called 

 a unit of work, .and 33,000 such imits of work in a minute, fonn the further unit 

 — Watt's horse-power. The unit of work may be called a double unit, inasmuch as 

 it involves two elements — weight (pound) and space (foot), while the horse-power 

 takes in time (minute), and is a treble unit. The French use a similar element 

 thus compounded : the horse-power is 75 Idlof/rams raised a metre in a second. 

 Remark that two of the elements of this unit are intangible. Chemistry furnishes 

 exaniples of compound units in its binary and ternary atoms. In statistics, double 

 and triple units are in use ; thus when I say the rate of mortality in a regiment is 

 2 per cent, per annum, I employ the double unit, a year of life. The years of life 

 are found by multiplying the time in years into the mean numbers living. The 

 strength of a regiment is 1000, and the average deaths are 20 in a year, 5 in a 

 quarter, so the mortality is as above stated ; but if the men die at the rate of 20 

 in a quarter, you have 20 deaths to 250 years of life, and the mortality is 8 per 

 cent. 



* Mathematical Dictionai'y. 



1 



