Stoney — How to simplify British Weights and Measures. 9 



small changes in the latter which he recommended, and which he 

 made the foundation of the rational and decimal system which he 

 suggested for adoption in England. If this option were allowed, 

 he anticipated that the better system would gradually supersede 

 the less perfect ; and that thus a good, if not the best, system of 

 weights and measures would become established in this country 

 without demanding any appreciable sacrifice from the people, or 

 enforcing upon them any sudden change of their habits. 



This proposal was made forty years ago, and since then the 

 world has not stood still. The use of metric measures, which up 

 to forty years ago had advanced slowly, has made more and more 

 rapid progress every decade since that time ; and has now an 

 assured footing among all the more civilized populations of the 

 world, except those who speak English — not excepting the people 

 of Russia, whose measures, forty years ago, were based upon those 

 of England. 



And, on the other hand, the considerations in favour of Sir 

 John Herschel's proposal have become weaker. It is now 

 perceived that far greater accuracy can be attained by comparing 

 all other measures with the standards established by the Inter- 

 national Committee on Weights and Measures, in which our 

 Government has taken part, than by any attempted comparison 

 with the length of the Earth's axis, to which Sir John Herschel 

 attached so much importance, or with the length of the Earth's 

 meridian as was laboriously attempted by the founders of the 

 metric system ; or by pendulum determinations, as had also 

 been advocated. It must also be recognised that the measures of 

 length, of surface, of capacity, and of weight, are brought into 

 better relation to one another in the metric system than in Sir 

 John Herschel's ; and that this gives the metric system an 

 advantage over its competitor of primary importance, and one the 

 benefit of which will last for all future time within any nation that 

 uses metric measures. 



It is useless to speculate how Sir John Herschel, if he were 

 writing in 1903 instead of in 1863, would deal with the question. 

 Eor my part, I do not think that he, or any other man who is as 

 competent to judge as he was, and who examines fully into the 

 question as it presents itself in the twentieth century, could 

 continue to advocate England's striving to set up the Herschel 



