Stone y — Hoiv to simplify British Weights and Measures. 11 



buying and selling, and because it made no provision for the 

 verification of metric measures by the Board of Trade. 



The Weights and Measures Act of 1878 made a very halting 

 advance. It provides for the verification of metric weights and 

 measures and sanctions their use for other purposes, but forbids 

 their being used in buying or selling commodities. This Act left 

 matters in such a state that, though metric measures might lawfully 

 be used by scientific chemists, and have been universally used by 

 them, the pharmaceutical chemist who had to sell his medicines was 

 compelled by the law to continue to use the old bad Apothecaries' 

 weights and measures. 



So matters remained until 1896, when the Government at 

 length introduced a Bill permitting the use of metric measures for 

 all purposes. To this Bill, as to the Acts of 1864 and 1878, were 

 attached, unnecessarily complex tables of equivalents for the 

 conversion of imperial into metric measures, and of metric into 

 imperial ; and when the attention of the Government was called to 

 this, they omitted the tables from the Bill, and introduced a clause 

 authorising the issue of tables by Order in Council. In 1897 the 

 Bill passed in this amended form ; and simpler tables have since 

 been issued by an Order in Council, dated 19th May, 1898. These 

 are now the tables of equivalents which have legal force. 



After this legislation had passed, Mr. Balfour, the leader of 

 the House, and Mr. Eitchie, who was then at the Board of Trade, 

 expressed the opinion, in replying to deputations, that Parliament 

 had now done its part, and that it was for the English people to 

 make the next move. The deputations had asked the Government 

 to introduce a Bill, forbidding the use of any other than metric 

 measures after two years. I venture to submit that both the 

 request and the reply need revision and amendment. 



The contention that it is the nation who should make the next 

 move is not tenable. Parliament has not as yet done anything to 

 facilitate the use of metric measures. It has made it barely pos- 

 sible for an Englishman to do so. After forty years of legislation 

 it has only gone so far as to relieve an Englishman who uses them 

 from being punished fordoing so; and it is plain to common sense 

 that this is not enough. As matters now stand, with the intricate 

 and troublesome relations which Parliament has allowed to subsist 

 between the two systems of measurement, it is in vain to ask men 



