UNirORMlTY OF WEIGHTS AND MEASURES. 311 



admeasurement and registration of the tonnage of shipping ; and that Mural 

 Standards of the Metric] System as well us of the Imperial System be 

 exhibited in public places. Tour Committee regret the recommendation of 

 the Commissioners to maintain for an indefinite time two legal systems in 

 general use, it being subject to trouble and confusion. Nor do they agree 

 with the reason assigned for any hesitation in this matter. It is asserted 

 that there is no immediate cause for a change for the purpose of internal 

 trade. But what say the Chambers of Agriculture and the Chambers of 

 Commerce on the subject? The Barustaplo Farmers' Club recently peti- 

 tioned Government in the foUowing terms : — 



" That your Petitioners, in common with the rest of the community, and 

 more especially of the farmers, suffer much needless disadvantage, and are 

 burdened with much unnecessary labour, by the great variety and compli- 

 cated character of the legal, and still more of the customary, Weights and 

 Measures in use in the United Kingdom, which add much to the number and 

 difficulty of the calculations required in business transactions, and deprive your 

 Petitioners of a great part of the benefit to be derived from the publication of 

 the prices current at the different markets in different parts of the country. 



*' That while under difterent heads, such as Long Measures, Land Mea- 

 sures, Liquid Measures, Dry Measures, and Weights of different kinds, for 

 different sorts respectively of lengths, of sui'faces, of work, and of articles, 

 dry and liquid, there are at least ten distinct sets of well ascertained, though 

 utterly unsystematic. Weights and Measures recognized bj^ law, besides an 

 imknown multitude of customary Weights and Measures iu use, in different 

 localities in the United Kingdom, your Petitioners hear with envy of the 

 superior facilities enjoyed by their rivals abroad iu those foreign countries 

 where a uniform Decimal System, comprising five series only, all equally 

 easy to be learnt and all founded on the same scientific basis, has been 

 established by law for the measurement respectively of length, of surface, of 

 capacity, of solid bulk and of weight — a system which, owing to its obvious 

 convenience, has either alreadj^ become, or is rapidly becoming, general in 

 practice wherever legally established. 



" That this System (known as the ' Metric,' because wholly based on the 

 Metre) was unanimously recommended in 1862, after a full inquiry, by a 

 Committee of the House of Commons, comprising distinguished men of all 

 political parties ; and has already been adopted in its entirety by countries 

 with a population of nearly 150,000,000, and a trade Avith the United King- 

 dom of nearly £180,000,000 sterling, and adopted in part by countries with 

 a population of nearly 70,000,000, and a trade with the United Kingdom of 

 .£50,000,000, each class of countries comprehending some of the most highly 

 civilized nations in the world, and each, as might be expected, continually 

 receiving additions, notwithstanding the refusal hitherto of this country and 

 the United States to do more than render the use of Metric Weights and 

 Measures permissive, and that of Eussia to recognize it at all. 



" The existing confusion in Weights and Measures in this country and its 

 Indian and Colonial Empire, equally complained of by the opponents and 

 supporters of the Metric System, renders the present time, in the opinion of 

 your Petitioners, particularly favourable for its legal adoption in its entirety; 

 since a change to this, the simplest, most convenient, and most widely used 

 System ever yet known, would cause hardly more trouble or inconvenience 

 than would the rigid general enforcement of our cumbrous and utterly irra- 

 tional Imperial set of Weights and Measures. 



" Your Petitioners therefore humbly pray your Honourable House to take 



