Sale of Com hy Weight. 
719 
One weight and one measure were extended throughout 
the kingdom by Magna Charta, the thirty-eighth and last 
ratification of which was in the reign of Henry VI. In the 
early Acts relating to the importation and exportation of wheat, 
the quarter is used. The English standards were in use in 
Ireland as early as 1495, and successive Acts produced a result 
I of unifonnity which has lasted till the present day. Ninety- 
seven per cent, of the Irish markets are found to use an uniform 
weight, namely the hundredweight for wholesale, and, for retail 
purposes, the stone of 14 lb. — the weight from which the hundred- 
weight was obtained by three processes of doubling — whilst all 
the Irish agricultural statistics are returned in hundredweights. 
In Scotland, ilr. Chaney is of opinion that there is a larger 
number of units in force than in England, owing to the fact 
that the old Scotch standards are still occasionally referred to. 
But the Corn Association of Glasgow, through which city pro- 
bably more com passes than through all the other towns of 
Scotland put together, has been the first to meet, and to pass a 
unanimous resolution in favour of the sale of grain by weight 
only, that weight being the 112 lb. The Association of Eoyal 
and Municipal Burghs of Scotland generally petitioned in 
favour of a Bill I introduced this year to abolish measure, as 
a means of paving the way for a uniform weight, or for drawing 
attention again to the question. The grain, markets of 
Edinburgh, Stirling, and Ayr are next in importance to the 
Glasgow market, after which the other towns, as I am advised, 
are much on an equality as regards the sale of grain. I am in 
hopes that the Highland Society, who discuss such questions, 
will aid us to the best knowledge of what the opinion of the 
Scotch farmers on this question is likely to be. I am informed 
they are mostly anxious to retain a bushel of 40 lb. weight for 
oats, which probably may be a more correct weight than the 
•39 lb. bushel, made the standard by the Corn Eeturns Act of 
1882, and which I hear the Board of Trade have resolved to 
adopt as the Imperial weight per bushel for oats instead of 39 lb. 
The Act of 1882 showed a kindly leaning to the farmers in 
possibly underestimating the weight that might more generally 
be required, in making the imperial bushel of wheat GO lb., of 
barley 50 lb., and of oats 39 lb. So little, however, did this 
well-intentioned Act secure uniformity, that few people in country 
markets know what the imperial standards are. When it is 
considered that all the multitudinous weights of the country are 
expected to be converted by the corn inspectors into measures 
of these weights for the Corn Returns (which regulate, amongst 
other things, the value of moi-e than four millions' worth of 
