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standards commission. 
the Legislature has been limited to such practical measures as the following : the giving 
certainty and precision to the fundamental standards, the establishment of accurate and 
more simple relations among systems which at first probably had no connection (as 
those of the stone and the pound), and, in some instances, the abolition of measures, etc., 
which, while bearing the same name, had slightly different values (as the various gal¬ 
lons). If this conjecture be correct, it tends to prove that the existing system meets the 
popular wants, and that it will not easily be expelled from popular use. 
9. There is good reason to believe that in large factories a decimal division is fre¬ 
quently convenient, and in many cases, for commercial reasons, the most convenient base 
for that division is the metric. The owners of those factories can, however, arrange 
such matters to a great extent, without legislative assistance. But for sales in shops, 
which specially require the care of the Legislature, and for ordinary work, other con¬ 
siderations apply. Different bases must be adopted ; for instance, the yard is a very 
convenient length for drapers’ measure, but the foot is far more convenient for carpenters’ 
measure. It has been remarked that the last or coomb, the bushel, and the peck, are 
well suited for men’s backs, arms, and hands. The natural inclination of the mind to 
halve and quarter continually exhibits itself in the subdivision of almost every base; 
thus, in avoirdupois weight and in measures of capacity, the progressive halving of 
the pound and bushel, and their lower denominations, is continued nine times, and the 
binary subdivision extends to The metric system does not offer the same facility 
either for change of the adopted base, or for the continued binary subdivision; and 
any attempt to force it into use in shops, and into workmen’s operations, and their ac¬ 
counts, would probably be felt as a needless grievance. 
10. The Commission are obliged to remark here that the evidence as to the feeling of 
the great class of vendors in shops and ordinary tradesmen is rather of an inferential than 
of a positive character. Among the witnesses examined by the Committee of the House 
of Commons which sat in 1862, there is not one shopkeeper, and scarcely one person of 
the lower working class. The evidence collected by the preceding Standards Commis¬ 
sions cannot fairly be cited now, as the question of introducing the metric system 
into this kingdom had then hardly been raised. But the Commission cannot omit 
to call attention to the distinct though negative fact, that not a single movement has 
been made on the part of shopkeepers or workmen for procuring a change, and not a 
single complaint has been made by them of the existing legal system of imperial 
weights and measures. 
11. It is obvious that in this country, where the people are more accustomed to self- 
government than in other European countries, the executive has far less power of com¬ 
pelling obedience to the law in all the small transactions of trade, against the wishes of 
the public. Should an attempt be made at the present time to introduce the metric 
system by legal compulsion, the Commission regard it as certain that very great con¬ 
fusion would be produced, and they think it highly probable that the attempt would be 
met by such an amount of resistance, active and passive, that it would totally fail. 
12. At the same time, the Commission remark that the want of weights and measures 
on a decimal scale generally, or on the metric scale specifically, is not unfrequently felt 
by the manufacturing and trading classes, and more especially by men of science, and 
by chemists and engineers of the highest class; and that it appears scarcely possible to 
satisfy this want, and to place the metric system on the footing which it seems justly to 
claim, except by the legal establishment of metric standards and of inspectors’ standards 
(where required), and by the legal sanction of the use of metric weights and measures 
in shops and in offices of conveyance. But such permission, unless very carefully 
guarded, would lead to the most intolerable and enduring confusion, and the Com¬ 
mission expressly state their opinion that any enactment giving permission to use metric 
weights and measures for public sales and conveyance must be accompanied with such 
provisions for their form or other characteristics as will make it impossible to mistake 
them for weights and measures of the existing imperial system. With very careful 
attention to these provisions, the Commission see no objection to the permissive intro¬ 
duction of weights and measures on the metric system into shops and offices of con¬ 
veyance, provision being also made for inspectors’ standards and powers of inspection 
where required. 
13. With the view of further lessening any confusion that might be occasioned by the 
addition of a new series of weights to those now existing of the avoirdupois and troy 
