1 66 Sir George Shuckburgh Evelyn’s Endeavours 
preserve, with the measures, the language of their forefathers. 
I would call a yard a yard, and a pound a pound, without any 
other alteration than what the precision of our own artists may 
obtain for us, or what the lapse of ages, or the teeth of time, 
may have required. 
(§< 34.) The difference of the length of the two pendu- 
lums, from Mr. Whitehurst’s observations, appearing to be 
59,89358 inches, on Mr. Troughton’s scale ; and a cubic inch 
of distilled water, in a known state of the atmosphere, having 
been found to weigh 252,587 Troy grains, according to the 
weights of the same artist, it remains only to determine the 
proportions of these weights and measures, to those that have 
been usually, or may be fitly, considered as the standards of 
this kingdom ; and herein a small discrepancy between them- 
selves, in these authoritative standards, will have no influence 
on the general conclusion I propose to draw ; which is, not so 
much to say what has been the standard of Great Britain, as 
what it shall be henceforward, and may be immutably so ; and 
which shall differ but a very small quantity, and that an as- 
signable one, from those that have been in use for two or three 
hundred years past. By these means, no inconvenience would 
be produced from change of terms, or subdivisions of parts, or 
from sensible deviation from ancient practice: all that will be 
done, will be to render that certain and permanent, which has 
hitherto been fluctuating, or liable to fluctuation. To give effect 
and energy to these suggestions, is the province of another 
power. 
(§. 35.) The chief standards of longitudinal measure, as far 
as I can learn, that carry any authority with them, are those 
preserved in the Exchequer; in the House of Commons ; at the 
