i88i.J Weights and Measures Question Reconsidered. 343 
which a change would bring to the present generation, and 
to the sacrifice of the not inconsiderable capital invested in 
weights and in measures of length and capacity ! 
Such is a very fair specimen of the language used by 
advocates of the metric system. Such is the language I 
have myself formerly used, for I have in my day been the 
duly appointed “ Hon. Sec.” to a certain local committee 
for the introduction of the metric system into the United 
Kingdom. As the said committee, after electing its officers, 
never again could be got to meet, I am not very gravely 
committed to the movement. 
But setting such mere personal considerations on one side, 
let us see whether in this case all is really gold that glitters, 
— whether such truly scientific men as the late Sir John 
Herschell, in opposing the projected reform, were actuated 
by no better- feeling than what we, for want of a more 
appropriate name, term “ mere conservatism.” 
I will begin with some very ample concessions. I will at 
once grant that two scales of weight, like the Troy and the 
Avoirdupoise, bearing no definite or simple relation to each 
other, are not to be defended. I will admit, as evils, that we 
have two linear measures, the one for length in the abstract, 
and the other for what it is now the fashion to call “ textile ” 
goods ; that our measures for superficial extent, e.g., land, 
are not simply the squares of either of the above, and that 
our measures of capacity are not the same for liquids and 
for solids, and that neither of them is correlated with our 
standards of length. Foreigners ask us occasionally, not 
unjustifiably, how any rational beings can tolerate a system 
of measures where the unit of a higher denomination is not 
the product of the lower by a whole number, as in the case 
where 16J feet make 1 statute pole. To do away with these 
inconsistencies would be something more than a mere sacri- 
fice to our love for logical symmetry and consequence — if, 
indeed, we Englishmen have any such feeling, and not rather 
its opposite. We are told to think what the metric system 
offers us in the way of tangible convenience and saving of 
labour. It sets out with the metre, originally, but — as it 
has since been discovered — erroneously, supposed to be the 
ten-millionth part of the length of a meridian from the Pole 
to the Equator. From this one basis the whole system of 
measures and weights flows as a connected whole. Square 
the metre and its multiples, and we have the measures of 
surface, no matter to what they are applied. Cube the 
metre, and we have the standard of capacity for liquids or 
solids. Fill such a cube with distilled water, and weigh it, 
