STANDARDS COMMISSION. 
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exchequer standards (now called the Board of Trade standards, or the official standards) 
of length and weight, and for other purposes therein set forth, acting under the direc¬ 
tions to us contained in the said warrant to report to your Majesty from time to time 
the result of our inquiries, humbly offer to your Majesty our Second Report. 
1. In closing their First Report, submitted to your Majesty under date of 24th July, 
1868, the Commission adverted to the metric system, and especially to the probable 
effect of attempting to introduce it into this country. The subject appeared to enter 
legitimately into their consideration, inasmuch as the introduction of a new system 
would imply addition to the existing Board of Trade standards, to which (among other 
things) the inquiries of the Commission are by your Majesty’s royal warrant specially 
directed. And the Commission expressed their sense of the great importance of the 
question, and undertook to give to it their early and careful attention. 
2. In their desire to redeem this pledge, the Commission have thought it advantageous 
to confine themselves in this their Second Report to the questions connected with the 
metric system, deferring to a later Report all allusion to the various points connected 
with the proceedings of the Standards Office, and with the British law and its adminis¬ 
tration, relating to the imperial system of weights and measures. 
3. It appears to the Commission that the reasons which may be urged for or against 
the introduction of a new system will naturally arrange themselves under two heads : 
namely, those which relate to the internal commercial transactions of the country, and 
those which relate to transactions with other countries. It is proposed here to consider 
the subject in that order. 
4. With reference to the question as bearing upon internal commerce, the Commis¬ 
sion have thought it desirable to examine into the reasons assigned for changes of 
system in other countries, and, if possible, to ascertain the results of their experience ; 
and to inquire whether similar reasons apply, and what may be anticipated as the effect 
of change in this country. 
5. As regards the first of these trains of inquiry, the Commission have derived most 
valuable information from official papers of other countries, transmitted either directly, or 
through the Board of Trade, to the Warden of the Standards, and by him communi¬ 
cated to the Commission. The information thus laid before them is appended to the 
Report. Among these documents, the most important are those of France, the United 
States of North America, North Germany, Switzerland, and India. As regards the 
second inquiry, the Commission have had before them the evidence collected by preceding 
Standards Commissions, and especially that which was heard by a Committee of the 
House of Commons in the year 1862 ; they have also had the results of their own per¬ 
sonal experience, both in matters of science and in transactions of daily life. 
6. The Commission remark that in the statements introductory to the proposals for 
new systems in France, North Germany, and India, very great stress is laid upon the 
discordance in the fundamental units of their customary weights and measures, as adopted 
in different districts of the same empire. These reasons have no force in Great Britain 
and Ireland, throughout which, whatever difference may prevail as to the multiples in local 
use, the fundamental units,—namely, the yard, the pound, the gallon,—are strictly the 
same; based upon national standards which are constructed with the utmost skill and 
care, and supported by a system of inspection which, though chargeable with imperfec¬ 
tions (to which the Commission at present advert no further), is on the whole efficient. 
The Commission also remark that, in the introduction of the new system into Switzer¬ 
land, it appears to have been rather the object of the proposers to define accurately the 
relation of their standard to the French standard, than to adopt the metric system ; thus, 
the Swiss foot is defined to be three-tenths of the metre, a proportion which seems to be 
irreconcilable with the practical adoption of a decimal scale. 
7. On the results of the introduction of the metric system, as matter of experience, it 
is difficult to give a certain statement. The great mass of people in France undoubtedly 
adopt it, both in the names and in the values of the weights, measures, and coins; 
although such names as the livre and the sou, for the half-kilogram and the piece of 5 
centimes, are still in common use. In Holland and other neighbouring countries the 
metric system, though very generally adopted, is, it is believed, still less perfectly in¬ 
troduced. 
8. In the United Kingdom, so far as can be conjectured, the existing imperial system 
has, in its main features, grown up spontaneously among the people, and the action of 
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