Western carat, 1/24 of a pure gold-unit. A cubit of 28 digits has an
alternative division into 24 qirát. The kharūb of Egypt, 16 to a dirhem
and 24 to a mithkal, is the weight-counterpart of the digit, 16 to the
foot and 24 to the cubit. The density of brine is on a scale of 24
qirát. Points in a competition, shares in a business or ship are
reckoned similarly. At Marseilles the ownership of a vessel is divided
into 24 qirát as it is in England into sixty-fourths.
‘Ai un queirat sus un navire’: _Calendau_ v. (by Mistral).
Sometimes the 24 qirát are grouped into 4 _rob_ of 6 qirát. _Rob_ is
from Ar. _al rabaa_, fourth; cf. _rubaiyat_ = quatrain. In Spain and
Portugal the arroba, in Provence the _rub_ (It. _rubbio_) is the
quarter-hundredweight.
_The Refiner’s Carat_
There is another use of the term Carat, confined to goldsmiths and
refiners of the precious metals. The old troy pound was regarded as 24
carats; the carat was 4 grains, each of 4 quarters or of 60 grains. This
system was used in the refinery of the Royal Mint up to 1882.
In Germany the Cologne marc (8 ounces) was divided by refiners (1) for
gold into 24 carats of 12 grains; (2) for silver into 16 loth
(half-ounces) of 18 grains.
It is probable that this system came to England with the Tower pound (12
ounces of the Cologne marc) and was continued with the Troy pound.
(B) _The Grain_
The names given to the smaller weights were taken from seeds just as
measures of length were named after limb-lengths corresponding roughly
to them. The kharoub may be used for a carat-weight. The ruttee or ráti,
a scarlet pea with a black spot, is used in India as a goldsmith’s
weight = 1·75 grain. Poppy-seeds, mustard-seeds, barley-corns,
wheat-corns, have been used for minute weights. The Grain was the Greek
_sitatrion_, a wheat-corn. It was perhaps from the custom of saying that
3 poppy-seeds = one mustard-seed, and that 6 of these = one barley-corn,
&c., that an idea arose of these seeds being the basis of systems of
weight. It has been seen that the definition of the Plantagenet
mint-weight was that 32 wheat-corns were the pennyweight. This idea,
hallowed in our statutes, is not yet extinct.
Ambroise Paré, in treating of medicinal weights (1582) said:
Every weight arises from some beginning and element. For as our
bodies arise from the four first simple or elementary bodies, so
all weights arise from the grain, which is _tanquam_ the
beginning and the end of the remainder. We understand a grain of
barley, neither dried nor mouldy, but well made and of medium
fatness. From 10 grains of this sort comes the obolus, from 2
oboli or 20 grains the scruple ... &c.
This is medieval rubbish. As John Greaves, Professor of Astronomy at
Oxford, in his ‘Discourse of the Roman foot’ (1647) wisely said:
I cannot but approve the counsel of Villapandus who adviseth
such as will examine measures and weights to begin with the
greater and not the lesser.... The most curious man alive with
the exactest scale that the most skilful artisan can invent,
shall never be able, out of the standard of one grain, to
produce a weight equal to the weight of ten thousand grains.
While the subdivision of linear measures and of weights usually stopped
at some familiar quantity named after a seed, yet efforts were sometimes
made to get at an ultimate atom as the term of the series. The Hindus
who began, or ended, a series of weights with one of the motes or fine
particles of dust visible in a sunbeam, were imitated by the English
moneyers who continued the 20-dwt. and 24-grain series by dividing the
grains into 20 Mites, each of 24 Droits, each of 20 Periots, each of 24
Blanks, the blank being 1/230400 of a grain.
So our mint expressed the weight of a Stuart silver penny, not as
7-23/31 grains (all the silver coins having then a fraction of 31sts);
that would have been too simple—but as 7 grains, 14 mites, 20 droits, 2
periots, 12 blanks. Even then the statement was not exact; one or two
more infinitesimal units would have had to be added to the series.
It may be noted that 7-23/31 grains is simpler than the modern decimal
equivalent 7·74193548, &c.
The origin of these mint-terms is obscure; the ‘N.E.D.’ casts no light
on it. I consider their source to be—
Mite—mijt, a small Dutch coin.
Droit—a corruption of the Dutch _duit_, Sc. ‘doit,’ a fraction of a
farthing. It was more properly written ‘dwit’; perhaps the _r_ was
inserted to avoid confusion with ‘dwt.’
Periot—a period or full stop; perhaps influenced by ‘iota’ and ‘jot.’
Blank—as the blank in dominoes, still lower than the ace, point, or full
stop, the Dutch As; perhaps influenced by ‘point-blank,’ in which the
bull’s eye, at first the ‘point,’ became the blank or white.
It has been seen, under Troy weight, that there are two classes of
grains:
The heavy grain 1/(20 × 24) = 1/480 ounce as in English Troy.
The light grain 1/(24 × 24) = 1/576 ounce as in French Troy.
The ounce of 576 light grains was used in France, some Italian states,
Spain and Portugal. Elsewhere, throughout Europe, the mint and medicinal
ounce was 480 heavy grains, the scruple being 20 grains.
The heavy and light grains have been connected respectively with the
barley-corn and the wheat-corn. They may have been so originally, but it
is more probable that the grain, at first a seed-weight, came to mean a
division of the scruple into either 20 or 24 parts.
In Dutch mint-weight the Troy ounce was of 20 dwt. or Engels, each of 2
mail, 4 vierling, 8 troisken, 16 deusken, 32 azen or aces. The Aas was
the wheat-corn of our mint-legend. In the Spanish Netherlands the Engel
was increased to make the ounce 24 × 24 grains. The Engel thus became
(Antwerp 1580) = 28·8 grains = 1-1/5 English dwt. The word Engel means
‘angel,’ not the angel coin weighing 3 engel 10 azen, but Angle—‘Angli,
non Angeli.’
4. THE TUN AND THE FOTHER
These words belong to an onomatopœic class:
1. Bung—akin to ‘bomb,’ to Fr. _bonbonne_, a more or less globular
vessel giving out a ‘bom’ sound when struck. In Somerset the bung-hole
of a cask is the bum-hole; a ‘bun’ is a puffed somewhat semi-globular
cake. Bung was probably a cask; the word is applied to a portly publican
fancifully resembling one of his casks. Bumboat probably meant a boat
carrying ‘bums’ or casks to ships.
2. Ton, tun—a large cask giving a thundering sound. L. _tonitru_, Fr.
_tonnerre_, whence Fr. _tonne_, our ton for weight, tun for capacity.
3. Fr. _Foudre_, a ‘thundering big’ cask or vat. L. _fulgur_, Fr.
_fouldre_, _foudre_, a thunder-bolt, in German _fuder_, whence our
‘fudder’ and ‘fother,’ about a ton of coal or of lead, a cartload of
about a ton.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
CHAPTER XXI
THE OLD MEASURES AND WEIGHTS OF FRANCE
Up to the time of the Revolution each province had its own measures and
weights, more or less influenced by the uncertain standard measures of
the king in Paris. This was the effect of the feudal system and of the
very gradual annexation of the provinces under conditions which left
considerable powers to the parliaments and other local authorities. Even
in each province varieties of measures were to be found, and they exist
to this day in each _pays_, often in each parish.
The basis of this very loose system was Roman, influenced in the North
by Teutonic importations, but especially by the peculiar and
intrinsically perfect system of the South, where the Roman basis had
entirely disappeared under the influences of commerce with Egypt and
with that portion of Africa which begins across the Pyrenees, and which
in medieval times imparted much of its high civilisation to European
countries.
1. THE SOUTHERN SYSTEM
This system, prevailing far beyond the limits of Occitania, the land of
the Lengo d’O, had for its basis the Load of Wheat, a measure very
nearly that of the cubed Arabic cubit, and comparable with the English
Coomb or half-Quarter. Just as the English Quarter of corn is 8 bushels,
so the Cargo (load, or Saumado, ass-load, Seam) is 8 Eimino. And just as
we had a wine-bushel, originally a cubic foot in water-wheat ratio with
the corn-bushel, so Occitania had its Escandau for wine corresponding,
in the Southern water-wheat ratio of 1 to 1·22, to the Eimino or Panau.
The only difference in this evolution was that, while our corn-measure
was increased from the wine-measure, the southern wine-measure, and
other measures evolved inversely from it, were produced from the
corn-measure as a basis. The word Escandau means ‘standard’ (like the
Denerel of Guernsey), and just as the cubic measure, the quadrantal, of
1000 Roman ounces of water, is the standard of our foot and virtually of
all our other measures, so the Escandau-quadrantal is the standard of
the Pán and of all the other measures of Marseilles. I take the
standards of Marseilles as it was the great port of trade in the South,
and incidentally those of Arles, the capital of the medieval kingdom of
Arles or of Burgundy, afterwards the republic of Arles. This was so
considerable a seaport, connected as it was with the sea both by the
Rhone and by a canal passage, the Fossæ Marianæ, through the lagoons,
that at one time the Lion of Arles was a rival of its brother of St.
Mark, and gave its name to the Gulf which receives the Rhone.
The process of involution by which the Pán of Marseilles was derived
from the side of an Escandau of quadrantal form has been described in
Chapter IV.
The Cano or fathom, = 79·24 inches, was 8 pán or spans each = 9·904
inches; the span was of 8 menut or inches, also divided into 8
parts.[47]
Footnote 47:
In Provençal, the principal idiom of the Occitanian language, nouns
take no plural form; so pán, cáno, &c., do not change. The Provençal
words in this chapter are pronounced—páng, cánn, saomádd, eymīnn,
escandáo, panáo, cárrg, miyeyròl.
The basis of the Southern system, typically that of Marseilles, was then
the Cargo, a corn-measure = 34·73 gallons (the equivalent of 154·79
litres, the official metric value), which was the cubic cubit of
Al-Mamūn:
21·28 inches cubed = 9639 c.i. = 34·73 gallons.
Now what water or wine measure would be produced from the Cargo,
decreased in wheat-water ratio?
Dividing the measure of the cargo by 1·22 we have:
34·73/1·22 = 28·46 gallons.
A fluid measure of this capacity is not in use at Marseilles, but we
find its half, almost exactly, in the Mieirolo = 14·19 gallons, a wine
and oil measure used extensively in Mediterranean ports.
The word Mieirolo, in which _mié_ means half, corresponds to the name of
the first in an Italian series of wine-measures:
Mezzaruola, Terzaruola, Quartaruola, fractions of a 28-gallon measure
now apparently obsolete.
The standard of the Mieirolo is now at—
Marseilles, 64·384 litres = 14·19 gallons.
Tripoli, 64·386 „ „ „
Tunis, 63·347 „ 13·97 „
Spain, 64·55 „ 14·23 „
One-fourth of the Mieirolo, or one-eighth of the obsolete wine-cargo, is
the Escandau, equal to the Spanish arroba (a word meaning ‘quarter’),
and containing, at the present Marseilles standard, 16·096 litres = 3·54
gallons. To this Escandau or standard corresponds, in water-wheat ratio,
the Panau = 4·34 gallons, 1/8 of the Cargo = 4·34 bushels or 34·73
gallons.
The correspondence of this series of wine and corn measures, in southern
water-wheat ratio, is perfect, even after many centuries, probably since
the tenth century. The Escandau and the Panau or Eimino correspond then
to about 4 wine-gallons and 4 corn-gallons.
The Escandau has always been understood to be a cubic pán. Escandau[48]
means a standard; Pán means a side, pane or panel, and it is the measure
of the side of a ‘quadrantal’ containing an Escandau of water, as our
foot is the measure of one containing an English talent of 1000 Roman
ounces of water. The cube root of 16·096 litres is 25·24 centimetres, a
length differing by less than a millimetre from the standard of the
Marseilles pán = 25·16 centimetres or 9·9 inches.
Footnote 48:
Escandau is to gauge, to sound depths, to standardise. This word is
from the same root as ‘scandalise’ applied to moral tripping, and then
to the use of the ‘stiliard,’ the lever-balance that trips with any
inequality of weight.
_Land-measures_
The ancient system of seed-measures, fixed geometrically, survives to
this day in Southern France, indeed throughout most of France. I shall
make no apology for dwelling on it, for the linear land and cubic
measures of Southern France show a perfectly concordant system of
measures, more so even than those of England; indeed they are the type
of a perfect system.
The largest unit of land is the Saumado, of 4 Sesteirado, each of 2
Eiminado; these being originally the ground that could be sown with a
Saumado (or Cargo), with a Sestié, with an Eimino, of wheat.
These seed-measures of land corresponding to our Coomb, Bushel and Peck
land, became fixed respectively at 1600, at 400, and at 200 square cano
or fathoms.
To the Sestié and the Sesteirado correspond the _boisseau_ and
_boisselée_ of Poitou and other provinces, the _boisselée_, or
bushel-land, being 400 square toises.
But the surveyor’s measuring-rod is the Destre, a double cano, of 16 pán
= 13 ft. 2-1/2 in. In Languedoc, west of the Rhone, the square destre =
4 square cano is the smallest unit, so that the Saumado of land is 1600
square cano or 400 destre. But in Provence the destre of land is 2
square cano, so that the Saumado is 1600 square cano or 800 destre; the
reason probably being that the destre should be 2 cano superficial as it
is 2 cano linear, and also that the Eiminado or peck-seedlip of land
should be 100 destre.
The Eiminado is divided into quarters and sixteenths, corresponding to
the gallon and quart divisions of the Eimino or peck. It is also divided
into 20 Cosso, the ground corresponding to a cosso (= quart,
wine-measure) of seed.
It is interesting to observe that the Saumado of 4 Sesteirado of 40
Cosso, corresponds, in division, to our Acre of 4 roods, of 40 square
rods.[49] And the Cosso = 1/100 acre or 1/10 sq. chain.
N.B.—1000 sq. cano = 1 acre.
The Saumado, of 1600 sq. cano = 1·6 acre.
Footnote 49:
The cosso is a wooden bowl, Sc. ‘luggie,’ used by shepherds. Our rod
is in some districts a ‘lug.’
Such is the typical system of Southern measures, best preserved in the
neighbourhood of Marseilles, but prevailing throughout the Southern half
of France, though with local variations in the length of the cano and
the names of the land-units.
_Measures of Capacity_
These have mostly been given in the story of the pán and in the
seed-measures corresponding to the land-measures.
Throughout the system the divisions in each series are sexdecimal, even
the Cosso, 1/20 Eiminado, being 1/160 Saumado.
_Weights_
There were three types of pounds in South France, local variations from
these being very slight. The pound was always 16 ounces, each of 8
ternau. The Ternau, so called from its being divided into 3
pennyweights, was the Arab dirhem. The three types of pound were:
Languedoc lb. = 6400 grs. Ounce = 400 grs. Ternau = 50 grs.
Gascony „ = 6280 „ „ = 392 „ „ = 49 „
Provence „ = 6030 „ „ = 377 „ „ = 47 „
(See
Chapter
XVIII.)
The Quintal was 100 of these pounds, but long hundredweights were
common. Its quarter was the Rub (Ar. _rouba_, four). These weights are
nearly obsolete, as the possession of any weights not of the Republican
system would be illegal. The measures of length and capacity are often
slightly altered so as to be in metric units: the pán becomes a
quarter-metre; groceries are often ticketed by the hectogramme, as this
is known to coincide very closely with the old Southern quarter-pound.
We now pass to the Northern or Paris system, mostly taken from the
South, and bearing evident traces of this origin.
2. THE NORTHERN SYSTEM
_Measures of Length_
The Roman foot survived in North France as the quarter of the Aune or
ell, a measure = 46·77 inches. (Cf. the passetto or double braccio of
Tuscany, of 4 palmi = 45·96 inches.) As a cloth-measure the Aune was
divided, like our cloth-yard and ell, into eighths and sixteenths.
But there was also the pied de roi, the royal foot, one-sixth of the
Toise, which = 76·73 inches = 1·949 metre.
The royal foot, = 12·789 inches, was divided into inches (pouces) of 12
lines, each of 12 points. Its standard was traditionally referred to
Charlemagne, either to the length of his foot, or to a standard brought
to him by the envoys of Harūn-al-Rashid. It coincides with half a
Hashími cubit, 25·56/2 = 12·78 inches. This tradition must be dismissed;
new measures are not introduced as standards in that way. It was simply
one-sixth of the toise, which was a Cano from civilised South France,
but its standard was so ill-kept as to be of doubtful exactitude. All
that is known of its standard is that, about 1668, an iron rod was fixed
in a wall of the Grand Chatelet in Paris and that the length of this rod
was that of half the breadth of the eastern gateway of the
Louvre-palace, which gateway was, according to the plans, 12 feet in
breadth. This standard was, however, considered to be 5/12 inch short of
the customary toise.
The Louvre standard, taking it at = 1·965 metre (which I find it by
actual measurement), corresponds closely to the Cano of Beaucaire. This
town on the southern Rhone, opposite Tarascon, had a great annual fair,
and may thus have given its linear standard to trade in the same way
that Marseilles passed the Cargo of its Egyptian corn-trade on to Paris
as the Setier, and that Troyes passed the marc used at its great annual
fair on to Paris as the standard of the French troy pound.[50]
Footnote 50:
There were relations between Burgundy and England. The former was, up
to the fall of its powerful dukes in the sixteenth century, a state
enjoying prosperity and independence, while France was mostly in a
condition of misery. It had, and retained till quite recently, its
system of measures and weights, derived from the southern system at
the time when Arles was the capital of the kingdom of Burgundy. It had
two toises, one = 7-1/2 French feet, the other, for field measure, =
9-1/2 French feet. Now the first seems to have passed to England, for
a time at least, for the _Liber Albus_, 1419, contains an order for
the City of London:
‘The Toise of pavement to be 7-1/2 feet in length, and the foot of St.
Paul in breadth.’
The English wool-weights, the wey, stone (12 French lb.) and clove,
were current in Burgundy and in Southern France.
But the royal foot was inconveniently long for popular use, and a
practice arose of taking 11 inches of it as a customary foot = 11·7
inches. This reduced foot, coinciding almost exactly with the
quarter-Aune, was much used in the districts north of Paris as the _pied
de Ponthieu_, or _de Clermont_. The Brasse was a short fathom of 5 pieds
= 5 ft. 4 in., probably an adaptation of the Roman pace. A _pas_ (pace),
of half a brasse = 32 inches, is used in some districts for
land-measurement.
_Measures of Distance_
There was no official measure of distance, such as our furlong and mile,
between the toise and the league, and the league was very variable (see
Chapter III). Acre-lengths, cordes, and other popular measures supplied
the want, more or less well. In some districts (also in Mauritius) there
were milestones at intervals of 1000 toises, called a mille. In South
France the mille was divided into centenié of 100 toises or perhaps
local cano. This was probably the length of the sesteirado, the rood,
100 × 4 cano.
The corde, a field-measure used before the surveyor’s chain, was of
variable length. In Burgundy the league of 3000 toises was divided for
roadwork into 50 portées, of 12 cordes; these would thus be 5 toises or
30 feet. But there seems also to have been a corde of 33 feet, perhaps
reduced feet, and thus = 30 royal feet, and this, doubled, was used as
the rough measure of a ‘cord’ of firewood = 4 × 4 feet, in 4-foot logs.
This is the probable origin of our ‘cord-wood’ as applied to stacked
logs for fuel.
_Land-measures_
The units are the square toise = 4·543 sq. yards, the perche and the
arpent, with other units in local usage.
There were three different perches officially recognised, and still in
common use.
1. _Perche d’ordonnance_ or of the _Eaux et Forêts_ administration, 22
royal feet = 23·466 English feet; the square perch of 484 sq. feet =
13·44 sq. toises = 2 sq. rods.
The approximate coincidence of the quarter-aune with the reduced royal
foot, i.e. of 12 Roman inches with 11 royal inches, was the probable
reason of the standard perch being fixed at 22 feet = 24 Roman feet or 6
aunes.
The standard arpent was 100 square perches = 1344 sq. toises = 200 rods
or 1·26 acre.
2. _Perche commune_, 20 royal feet = 21·3 English feet, the square perch
of 400 sq. feet = 11·11 sq. toises = 50·47 sq. yards.
The _arpent commun_ was 100 of these square perches = 1111 sq. toises =
1·04 acre.
3. _Perche de Paris_, 18 royal feet = 19·83 English feet, the square
perch of 324 sq. feet = 9 sq. toises = 40·9 sq. yards.
The _arpent de Paris_ was 100 of these square perches = 900 sq. toises =
0·844 acre.
The arpent commun is that of Quebec.
The arpent de Paris is that of Mauritius.
The acre de Normandie varies according to its perch, but it is always
160 sq. perches, and if these be standard it is equal to 2 acres. But
the usual unit is the vergée or rood, of 40 perches = 1/2 acre.
It has been seen that the Jersey vergée is 40 perches of 22 reduced
English feet square, the foot being 11 inches. This is an adaptation of
a very general Normandy perch, 22 feet of 11 French inches. It is = 0·44
acre.
Local French land-measures varied considerably, from different standards
of perch, from different lengths taken for the foot of the perch. But
the size of the unit, Journal, Estrée, &c., &c., is very generally =
1400 to 1600 square perches or roughly about 1-1/2 acre. These measures,
so irrational to the Parisian, are dear to the peasant’s heart; he
understands them, and as people do not buy land as they would apples or
eggs, no one is deceived.
The Estrée or Seterée (Setier seed-land) might be divided into 12
Boisselées (small-bushel lands).
_Weight_
The royal pound, _livre poids de marc_, the double-marc of Troyes, was
one of several pounds current in Northern France. It was, like the royal
foot, ascribed to Charlemagne, but his standard of weight, as known by
his silver pennies, nearly always much above 24 grains, 1/20 of some
ounce heavier than that of the Troyes marc, was probably altered later
on. The royal pound, = 5570 grains, was raised for commercial purposes
(about 1350) to 16 ounces = 7554·1 grains, the ounce = 472·13 grains.
The weight of the 12-ounce pound coincides very closely with that of the
Bosphoric miná, 100 drachmæ of 56·66 grains; this is perhaps the origin
of the story that it was sent to Charlemagne by Harūn al Rashid. Its
ounce is also approximately the Tripoli ukyé of 10 dirhems × 470-3/4
grains, and nearer still to 471 grains, the weight of 10 of the dirhems
of which 8 made the Provençal ounce.
It is probable that the French pound was one of the lighter pounds of
the variable Northern Troy series, all with an ounce of 10 dirhems of 48
grains more or less.
The ounce was divided into 8 gros, groats or drachms, of 3 deniers or
dwt., each of 24 grains. So the livre was 16 × 24 × 24 = 9216 French
grains. These were light grains, not the heavy grains, 20 × 24 to the
ounce, of English and other mint-weights.
There was a Quintal of 100 livres = 107·7 lb.
The Tonne or tonneau was 2000 livres = 2154 lb.
_Value_
The French coinage-system, probably instituted by Charlemagne, was the
same as ours. The original unit was the silver penny, _estelin_
(sterling) or denier (L. _denarius_) of 24 French grains; 12 deniers
made a sol or sou (L. _solidus_, shilling) and 20 sols made the livre or
pound, originally a livre d’estelins, a 12-ounce pound of sterlings. But
the silver coinage shrank and was debased, until, by the eighteenth
century, the pound, livre or franc was a silver coin worth tenpence, the
sol a copper halfpenny, and the denier had shrunk, even as copper, to so
minute a size that its place was taken by the _liard_, a small copper
coin of 3 deniers, a quarter-sou; even the _double_ of 2 deniers had
disappeared. Accounts were kept in livres and sols and deniers, our £
_s._ _d._, but at 1/25 the present value of our coin.
The _écu_ of 3 livres, that is of 60 sous, was largely used; wages of
farm-servants are often at the present day reckoned in écus. This was
properly a _petit-écu_ or half-crown, but the real écu of 6 livres was
so little used that the smaller coin took its name. And, as our
half-crown has the great convenience of being one-eighth of a sovereign,
so the écu had that of being one-eighth of a louis, the gold piece of 24
livres. This was the value of the louis at par, for it varied as did
that of the guinea when England was a silver-standard country.
_Measures of Capacity_
These measures, both the wine-series and the corn-series, were quite
discordant and had no relation to the measures of length. That this was
caused by an incoherent system of factors is shown by there being in
each series a unit derived from the perfectly concordant measures of the
South:
The wine-velte = 1·76 gallon, half of the Escandau.
The corn-setier = 34·32 gallons, the Marseilles Cargo.
The former, when increased in water-wheat ratio, is almost exactly 1/16
of the latter. So, had the former, increased in this ratio, been
multiplied sexdecimally, concordance would have been preserved. But
there was a customary Muid = 63-1/2 gallons, our hogshead, with its
quarter, our kilderkin, the Quartaut = 15·8 gallons, and not to derange
these measures the velte was made one-ninth of the Quartaut. And in the
corn-series the Setier was divided and multiplied duodecimally. So the
concordance was entirely deranged.
1. _Wine-measures._—The Velte (the origin of which is given in Chapter
XIX) was divided into 2 gallons (our wine-gallon), 4 pots (our pottle),
8 pintes. The last of these, = 1·76 pint, was about our old wine-quart,
= 32 oz., its half was a chopine or setier, = our wine-pint, and the
half of this was the demi-setier, a name still current, the French
equivalent of our popular ‘half-pint.’
2. _Corn-measures._—The standard unit was the Setier = 34·32 gallons, or
4·29 bushels, differing very slightly from the Marseilles Cargo = 4·34
bushels. As the Setier was an isolated measure, while the Cargo was from
early medieval times the basis of the complete system of Southern
measures, it may confidently be inferred that the Paris unit of
corn-measure was taken from that of Marseilles, which was the Egyptian
Rebekeh, the cubed Arabic cubit.
The term Setier is the L. _sextuarius_, but it had lost its original
meaning and become a general-utility term in measures. The Setier = the
Marseilles Cargo of 4 Sestié, must not be confused with this sestié. It
was divided into 12 boisseaux of variable standard, but usually
estimated to hold 20 French pounds of wheat. As 1/12 setier, the
boisseau was = 2·86 gallons, and it was divided into 16 litrons = 1·43
pint.
There were intermediate divisions of the Setier; it was of 2 mines (a
term taken from the Southern _eimino_), 4 minots, 12 boisseaux.
There was also a Muid for corn and salt. The corn-muid was 12 setiers.
There are still in France traces of an older system of corn-measures
derived from the cubic foot. I found, in the Rouen Museum, the standard
bushel of the town of Bolbec. It measures 16 inches diameter by 12·6
inches deep = 2533 cubic inches or 9·14 gallons. It appears to be the
French cubic foot = 2091 cubic inches increased in water-wheat ratio to
2533 × 1·22 = 2551 cubic inches, a difference probably to be ascribed to
the difficulty in measuring at all accurately.
There are also many local standards of capacity, well deserving of
study. Some, as the bushel of La Rochelle, indeed of the west of France
generally, = 56 lb. of wheat, are much larger than the Paris Bushel.
There was a general rejection of the duodecimal division of the Setier.
TABLE OF OLD FRENCH MEASURES
Length Land
Aune = 46·77 inches. Square Toise = 4·54 sq. yards.
Toise = 76·73 „ Square Perche = 2 sq. rods.
Pied = 12·789 „ Arpent (× 100) = 1·26 acre.
Perche = 23·446 feet.
Wine-measure Corn-measure Bushels
Muid = 63·5 galls. Muid = 51·6
4 Quartaut = 15·8 „ 12 Setier = 34·32 gall. = 4·29
9 Velte = 1·76 „ 12 Boisseau = 2·86 „
8 Pinte = 1·76 pint. 16 Litron = 1·43 pint.
2 Chopine = 0·88 „
Weights
Quintal = 107·7 lb.
100 Livre = 7554 grains.
16 Once = 472·1 „
24 Deniers (dwt.) = 3 to a ‘gros.’
24 Grains.
_Remarks on the French Measures of Capacity_
The fault of the Paris system was that there was little or no
concordance between the different series.
In length, 6 aunes approximately coincided with 22 feet or 3-2/3 toises.
The measures of length had no concordance with those of capacity, and in
the latter, wine-measure and corn-measure had lost their original
concordance when they were brought from the south. They lost it by two
faults:
1. By making the quartaut of 9 veltes instead of 8;
2. By dividing the setier into 12 boisseaux instead of 8.
Had this octonary division been substituted, it would have been quite
satisfactory, and concordance with the linear standard would have been
obtained.
A quartaut of 8 veltes, 8 × 1·76 = 14·08 gallons, would have been in
water-wheat ratio with the corn half-setier = 17·16 gallons:
14·08 × 1·22 = 17·17.
And the setier divided into 8 parts would have given a larger boisseau =
4·29 gallons (a peck) corresponding in water-wheat ratio to the double
velte of 4 gallons and measuring approximately 1000 cubic pouces (983
exactly); its side, when of cubic form, being almost 10 pouces, and thus
affording an easily applied linear measurement as a check on the
variation of the boisseau. The standard of this measure was most
variable from want of such a check. Really, as 1/12 Setier it should
have been 655·4 cubic pouces, but it varied between 644 and 677, its
reputed capacity being 640 cubic pouces.
It would have been easy to have fixed the new boisseau at 1000 cubic
pouces, raising the variable standard of the Setier to 8000 cubic pouces
= 34·9 gallons instead of its reputed standard = 34·32 gallons.
By these slight alterations perfect accordance with the southern
measures would also have been obtained.
Leaving the measures of length and surface which were sufficiently
concordant, the measures of capacity would have been:
Wine-measure Corn-measure
Muid = 56·32 gallons. Muid = 34·9 bushels
= 4·36 qrs.
1/2 „ = 28·16 „ (8) Setier = 34·9 gallons
Quartaut = 14·08 „ = 8000 c.p.
(8) Boisseau = 4·36 gallons
(8) Velte = 1·76 „ = 1000 c.p.
(8) Pinte = 1·76 pint. 16 Litron = 2·18 pint.
A water-wheat ratio of 1 : 1·24 would have been preserved between the
two series, and their connection with linear measures through a cubic
boisseau of 10 pouces each side (or a cylindrical one of 10 pouces
diameter and 11·4 pouces in height) would have been most advantageous.
It may seem futile to make these proportions 120 years too late, but
they may be useful in showing how unnecessary was the revolutionary plan
of uprooting the old measures.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
CHAPTER XXII
THE METRIC SYSTEM
The great diversity in the weights and measures used in different parts
of France, and the discordance between the series of the official
system, or want of system, were inconvenient, and tended to become more
so with the increasing facilities of communication between the
provinces. Unification was required, and was being studied at the time
when the Revolution broke out.
The obvious plan was to make such alterations in the Paris system as
were strictly necessary, keeping to the main standards of length and
capacity, standards not irreconcilable, and to make it obligatory
throughout France. As Napoleon said, ‘It was so simple that it could
have been done in twenty-four hours, and adopted throughout France in
less than a year.’
Amendments such as I have sketched in the last chapter would have
answered the purpose sufficiently.
The ostensible plan of the new system of weights and measures was (May
8, 1790) ‘to create them anew on invariable bases, and to establish in
commercial calculations the uniformity which Reason has vainly called
for during so many centuries, and which must form a new bond between
men.’
Even this scientific and fraternal plan, at first on the basis of a
normal pendulum-length, 3/4 inch longer than the half-toise (as proposed
by James Watt in 1783), might have been carried out so as to disturb the
hereditary ideas and customs of the people as little as possible. But it
was resolved to take a geodesical basis. This, taken afresh and not
accurately, for the metre, was already at hand in a toise equal to the
Olympic fathom, 1/1000 of the meridian mile. And in the report to the
Convention, it was recognised that the most ancient people had measures
derived from the terrestrial meridian.
More than two centuries before the Revolution an abbé (Mouton) had
proposed a revival of the Olympic system, decimalised from the meridian
mile down to a digit, 1/100 of the fathom.
Without this decimalisation, at least in the popular series of measures,
there was a geodesic basis—for this was resolved as necessary—already at
hand in the Olympic system, and the Olympic foot cubed would have given
a unit of capacity and the Olympic talent one of weight, all the more
suitable inasmuch as 1/1000 of it would have been an ounce = 453·6
grains, closely approximating to the Cologne ounce and therefore likely
to be acceptable in other countries. But the real object was to make a
clean sweep of the past; and the formation of a Republican system of
measures was entrusted to mathematicians and other scientists who did
not consider that a system convenient to them might be very inconvenient
to unscientific people. The division of all measures must be on an
obligatory decimal system convenient to mathematicians and most
inconvenient to nearly everyone else.
The basis of the new system was a measure considered to be one
ten-millionth of the quarter-meridian, of the distance from the equator
to the pole. This unit was neither original in conception nor exact in
measurement. When Aristotle divided the circumference of the globe into
400,000 stadia, instead of the 240,000 stadia of 1000 Olympic fathoms,
his stadion, 1/100,000 of the quarter-meridian, was equal to 100 metres.
But there was no practical advantage in it, and navigators continued to
use the nautical mile of 10 Olympic stadia, as they do to this day.
At least Aristotle did not seek to upset all the weights and measures of
the Macedonian empire; and his stadion disappeared.
It is doubtful if absolute exactness will ever be attained in the
measurement of the surface of our globe, irregularly spherical in form
and of very uneven surface; but there is no doubt that the ancient
Chaldæans and Egyptians measured it sixty centuries ago quite as
accurately as the astronomers of the first Republic; and the Olympic
standard of the meridian mile, not the kilometre, is the unit used to
this day by the navigators of France as by those of every other maritime
nation.
Having determined with little exactitude the metric decimal fraction of
the quarter-meridian, the astronomers and mathematicians of the
Republic, _les idéologues_ as Napoleon called them, proceeded to evolve
from it the most inconvenient possible units of length, surface,
capacity, and weight. All that could be said for these units is that
they were exactly and decimally derived from the metre. The metre was
unacceptable to the people, as no metric unit of length corresponds even
approximately to the universal limb-units of fathom, cubit, foot, span,
palm, finger or thumb-breadth. The different series admit only the
factors, 1, 2, 5; so each decimal unit has a half (0·5) and a double,
but no quarter or third. The prefixes—in Latin for divisions, _deci_,
_centi_, _milli_; in Greek for multiples, _deca_, _hecto_, _kilo_,
_myria_—give the only names allowed.
_Length_
The Metre, = 39·370113 inches, is divided into 10 decimetres, 100
centimetres, 1000 millimetres.
1 yard = 0·9144 metre; 1 foot = 0·3048 metre; 1 inch = 0·0254 metre, or
2·54 centimetres.
It is multiplied by 10 for the decametre, by 100 for the hectometre, by
1000 for the kilometre, by 10,000 for the myriametre. Practically the
kilometre, = 0·621 mile or 1093·6 yards, is the only larger unit used;
the other units are useless. And though it be interesting to know that
the kilometre is approximately 1/10,000 of the quarter-meridian, it is a
useless fact.
_Surface_
The square metre = 1·196 square yard. The lower units are little used.
For land-measurement the square decametre, 10 × 10 metres, is called an
Are; 100 ares = 100 × 100 metres, make a Hectare = 2·47 acres; and the
square metre is a Centiare.
1 acre = 0·40468 hectare.
_Solidity_
The cubic metre = 35·315 cubic feet (nearly the volume of a ton of water
= 35·84 cubic feet) contains 1000 cubic decimetres, each of 1000 cubic
centimetres (= 61 cubic inches).
1 cubic foot = 0·028317 cubic metre.
The cubic centimetre is strictly speaking 1/1000 cubic decimetre, but as
used in chemistry for fluid measure it is considered as 1/1000 of the
litre, which is only approximately a cubic decimetre.
_Capacity_
The Litre was originally a cubic decimetre, but this definition has been
abandoned. It is now defined as the volume of a kilogramme of pure water
in air at 4 degrees Centigrade = 39·2° Fahrenheit.
At ordinary temperatures a litre of water weighs about 998·8 grammes or
0·9988 kilogramme (see Table at end of Chap. X).
The only minor unit practically used (and only in scientific work) is
the millilitre, under the name of cubic centimetre, = 15·432 grains of
water.
1 Litre = 2·204 lb. water, or 1·76 pint.
1 Pint = 0·568 litre; 1 gallon = 4·546 litres.
The principal larger unit is the Hectolitre = 22·04 gallons or 2·75
bushels. The Decalitre = 2·2 gallons.
1 Bushel = 36·37 litres; 1 Quarter 291 litres or nearly 3 hectolitres.
1 Bushel to the acre = 0·9 hectolitre to the hectare. (Deduct 1/10 on
English.)
1 Hectolitre to the hectare = 1·11 bushel to the acre. (Add 1/10 to
French.)
_Weight_
The original unit was the Gramme, defined as the weight of a cubic
centimetre of water at 4° Centigrade = 15·432 grains. It is divided into
10 decigrammes, 100 centigrammes, 1000 milligrammes. Of its multiples
the decagramme is useless; the hectogramme is merely the name inscribed
on a 100-gramme weight; the kilogramme of 1000 grammes is used when its
use cannot be avoided.
But the present legal unit is not the gramme but the kilogramme = 2·2046
lb. or 15,432 grains.[51]
Footnote 51:
This is a partial return to the original arrangement. The kilogramme
was originally named the Grave, with its decigrave and centigrave. The
tonne of 1000 kilogrammes was originally called a Bar, with its
decibar and centibar. The gramme was a Gravet, with its decigravet and
centigravet. Similarly the hectolitre was originally named the
Decicade (1/10 of the Cade = 1000 litres) of 10 centicades. The litre
was a Cadil.
Intended to be the weight of a cubic decimetre of water at 4° C. (as the
gramme was that of a cubic centimetre), this definition has been
abandoned as inexact; it is now, like our pound, the mass of a certain
platinum standard, in a vacuum.[52]
Footnote 52:
In the latitude of Paris. If weighed at Marseilles it would be equal
to about 1000·4 grammes; if in London to 999·75 grammes. It
necessarily varies with latitude, as does the length of the pendulum
beating seconds. But this variation does not impair its relative
accuracy, as whatever it is weighed against is similarly affected.
Practically, the unit of weight in the ordinary transactions of life is
the ‘half-kilo’ of 500 grammes, more usually known as a livre or pound,
though the use of this word in trade is punishable.
The livre or half-kilo = 1·1 lb. or 7716 grains.
1 kilo = 2·2046 lb. or 15,432 grains.
100 kilos or Quintal metrique = 220·46 lb.
1000 kilos or Tonne 2204·6 lb. = 0·984 ton.
1 ton = 1016 kilos; 1 cwt. = 50·8 kilos; 1 lb. = 0·4536 kilo or 453·6
grammes.
1 ounce = 28·35 grammes; 1 grain = 6·48 centigrammes.
100 kilos of wheat = 3·53 bushels, at 62-1/2 lb.
100 litres (1 hectolitre) of wheat = 2·75 bushels.
7 fr. duty on 100 kilos wheat = 2 fr. a bushel or 12_s._ 4_d._ a
quarter.
1 bushel = 36·4 litres.
_Money_
The monetary unit is the Franc, practically the same as the old livre,
somewhat less. According to the original plan, the Republican franc was
to be 10 grammes weight, so that the decimal harmony of the system
should not be disturbed. But financial expediency required it to be of
about the same weight as before, so 80 old livres were recoined as 81
francs at 5 grammes weight and 0·900 fineness. The franc was to be of
100 centimes instead of 20 sous of 4 liards.
The copper coins, changed to bronze in about 1854, are pieces of 10 and
5 centimes, the latter equivalent to the old sou, so that the franc is
commonly called a 20-sou piece, and the other silver coins, nominally of
5, 2, and 1/2 franc, are called in the same way _pièces de cent sous_,
_quarante sous_ and _dix sous_. The centime is so rarely seen as to be
practically non-existent, and the decimal system not allowing the half
or quarter of the 5-centime piece or sou, great inconvenience is felt by
the poor,[53] yet the symmetry of the system has been marred by the
issue of nickel quarter-francs, of a size which makes them often
undistinguishable from francs. But this is 25 centimes, while the
half-sou would be written 2·5 centimes, marring the symmetry of the
centime column in accounts—where practically it would never appear.
Footnote 53:
Thus if bread is 25 centimes or 5 sous the kilo, a single pound or
half-kilo of bread cannot be bought at this price.
Since the adoption of a gold standard under the second Empire, the gold
20-franc piece is the standard of exchange, and of payments in trade. It
weighs 6·451 grammes = 99·5635 grains; it is of 0·900 fineness (= 22-1/5
carats) and thus contains 86·6071 grains of pure gold. Its exchange
value is usually 15_s._ 10-1/2_d._, our sovereign being equal to 25
francs 20 centimes.
The system of international currency has led to the French currency
containing coins, both gold and silver, of strange devices, and the
necessity of placards in shops showing figures of the numerous coins
which should not be accepted. Considerable vigilance is necessary to
avoid taking coins not current, or taking for francs the nickel five-sou
pieces scarcely distinguishable from them except in a good light.
_Temperature_
The French thermometer, called Centigrade (the proper term would have
been centesimal), is on Celsius’s scale, of 100 degrees between the
freezing and boiling points of water, under the normal atmospheric
pressure, which for France is 760 millimetres = 29·92 inches.
_Metric Measures of Time_
These are dropped, officially, at present; but they may be
re-established, for they were the essential part of the Republican
system. Ardent republicans constantly claim their re-establishment, and
sound republican newspapers, dated according to the republican calendar,
take care that this shall not be forgotten. Scientific journals demand
the re-establishment of decimal time and decimal degrees; for even to
sell eggs or handkerchiefs by the dozen is a sin, and ought to be made a
crime, against the decimal system.
Republican zeal, unable to reform the solar system, had to content
itself with reviving the ancient Egyptian year of twelve equal months
followed by five extra days, to be called Jours Sansculottides, and with
instituting a new era. The extra day of leap-years made a sixth
sansculottide; these years were therefore sextile, and the period of
four years ending with leap-year was to be called a Franciade.
In justice to the authors of the Metric system, it must be said that
they were not responsible for the Republican calendar; this was the work
of a separate Committee, to whom the Convention handed over the work
carried out by the Weights and Measures Committee of the Académie des
Sciences. On August 1, 1793, it thanked the W. and M. Committee for
their work, on the 6th it closed all the Academies, and soon after sent
the great chemist Lavoisier, the principal member of the Committee, to
prison and ultimately to the scaffold. Among the small number of real
republicans who ruled France from Paris, there was much less enthusiasm
for the metric system, intended to sweep away the memory of the old
customs of weights and measures, than for the calendar, the essential
part of which was a new era and the sweeping away of past superstitions,
whether Pagan or Christian. In both cases one can see the power of a
very small but enthusiastic, well-organised and violent minority of
Jacobins against the large, but unorganised and terrorised, majority of
the French people. In both cases we see the truth of Guizot’s saying:
‘Blind aversion for the past is full of falsehood and of ignorance.’[54]
Footnote 54:
It had been proposed in 1789 to divide France into equal departments
or districts by rule and compass. Each district was to be half a
degree square. It was only the refractoriness of the coast line that
prevented this geographic homage to equality.
The decree instituting the complete Republican system began by these
words, characteristic of the times:
The French era begins with the foundation of the Republic, which
was on 22nd September 1792 of the vulgar era, the day when the
sun arrived at the true autumnal equinox, entering the sign of
the Balance, at 9h. 18m. 30s. a.m., Paris Observatory time.
Thus (it continued) the heavens marked the equality of days and
nights at the same moment that civil and moral equality was
proclaimed by the representatives of the French people as the
sacred foundation of its new government.
The month was divided into three decades and the days of the decimal
week were numbered from one to ten.
The saints whose names had been attached to the days were abolished.
They were replaced by objects of republican veneration, animals,
vegetables, minerals, tools, &c. Each Decadi was consecrated to an
agricultural implement, the plough, the watering-pot, the pitchfork, &c.
Each Quintidi was consecrated to a useful animal, the horse, the ass,
the pig, the trout, &c.
The eight other days of the decade were consecrated to plants, &c. It
was difficult to find 288 useful plants, but by bringing in such as the
nettle, the dandelion (under its vulgar French name), strange plants
discovered in a herbal dictionary, together with the manure heap and a
few useful minerals, the saints were entirely replaced. To popularise
these substitutes for the _ci-devant_ saints an appendix to the
Decadaire or Annuaire (for the term Calendar was abolished as savouring
of superstition) gave popular information, in the crudest terms, on the
diseases for which the vegetables and herbs were recommended by the
scientific advisers of the Republic.
To complete this system, the circles of the globe, and all other
circles, were divided into 400 degrees, divided decimally. The day was
divided into 10 hours, of 100 decimal minutes, each of 100 decimal
seconds.
The republican division of the day was not generally put into practice
except in official documents, probably because the Jacobin leaders found
it personally inconvenient. Decreed as obligatory in Frimaire, an II, it
was suspended in Germinal, an III, yet that it was extant, if not in
force, up to 1800 is shown by a police-report of an occurrence on ‘21
Brumaire an VIII à 2 heures 10 minutes décimales,’ i.e. at 5 A.M.
The story of the means by which the unpopular republican measures were
enforced has not yet been told. Some idea of it may be guessed from a
remark of de Bonald (1817):
I believe that the same firmness, rigour, and lavish
expenditure, used to establish, or rather to try and establish,
uniformity of weights and measures, would have been sufficient
to establish uniformity of religion.
If in a country which had experienced Louis XIV’s system for
establishing uniformity of religion, this could be said of the means by
which the republican weights and measures were enforced, it is evident
that the new system met with anything but the welcome usually supposed.
But a man had arisen who delivered France, for a time at least, from the
more objectionable parts of the republican measures, and the good he
effected in this way had doubtless much to do with his popularity. From
the time of his Consulate, at the end of 1799, the rigour of the system
was gradually relaxed. His contempt for the mathematician-advisers of
the Republic, whom he had found to be incapable in public business, was
probably brought to a climax by the following event.
The ordnance survey-maps of France were on Cassini’s scale of 1/86,400,
i.e. 1 line to 100 toises (which is the proportion of the second to the
mean day). A new map having been made on the metric scale of 1/100,000,
Napoleon soon found this out, and ordered the map to be restored to the
old scale.
‘Je la veux sur l’échelle de Cassini, et je me moque des divisions
décimales’ (letter to the Minister of War, 1809).
The republican calendar and era were used until the end of 1805, when
Napoleon restored the Gregorian calendar and its era; thus 11 Nivose, an
XIV, was the last day of the republican system.
But the republican idea of a new calendar and a new era is not dead; it
has so little died out that a calendar and era devised by a French
mathematician and sociologist in 1852 is now actually used, not only in
France, but in England, and also in Brazil, by the followers of this
reformer.[55]
Footnote 55:
In this Positivist Calendar the saints of the old calendar and the
agricultural produce of the revolutionary calendars are replaced by
great men and women; typical great men, from Moses and Homer to
Descartes and Bichat, giving their names to the 13 months, each of 28
days. There is an extra day at the end of the year, and two extra days
in leap-year. This system has the advantage of the 7th, 14th, 21st and
28th of the month always falling on the same day of the week.
The Positivist era dates from 1789; and the followers of Auguste
Comte, in England, France and elsewhere, thus date 1911 as the ‘year
123 of the Great Crisis.’
------------------------------------------------------------------------
CHAPTER XXIII
HOW THE METRIC SYSTEM WORKS IN FRANCE
Napoleon, who had witnessed the rigorous measures of the Republican
government to enforce its metric system, said of it:
It violently broke up the customs and habits of the people as
might have been done by some Greek or Tartar tyrant who, with
uplifted rod, wills to be obeyed in all his decrees, regulated
by his prejudices or his interests, without any regard for those
of the conqueror.... It was tormenting the people for
trifles.[56]
Footnote 56:
The full French text of Napoleon’s opinion is given in _Against the
Metric System_, by Herbert Spencer (Williams and Norgate, price
3_d._).
But he was too wise to disturb trade again by any change in the material
standards, however objectionable; he kept these, while abolishing the
unpopular decimal series.
The decree of February 12, 1812, accordingly ordered that weights and
measures, while being strictly in accordance with the existing standard
units, should have ‘such fractions and multiples as were generally used
in trade and were best suited to the needs of the people.’
A double-metre became the new Toise, divided, like the old toise, into 6
feet of 12 inches. The Aune was to be 1·2 metre.
The hectolitre and the litre were divided sexdecimally, one-fourth of
the hectolitre becoming a double-Boisseau differing very slightly from
the old measure of the same name.
The half-kilogramme became the Livre, divided into 16 ounces, these
being divided into eighths. The Quintal was 100 livres, the millier 1000
livres, the tonneau 2000 livres.
With regard to money, the gold napoleon being 20 francs and the franc of
20 sous, divided into 4 liards or half-farthings, the system was
convenient.
This practical though incomplete compromise was in force until 1837,
when Louis-Philippe restored, on paper at least, the full republican
system, except the measures of time. Yet the Napoleonic compromise held
its ground, and indeed has lost little up to the present day,
notwithstanding a more rigorous enforcement of the decimal system under
the second Empire and the third Republic.
About 1859 began the propaganda of the metric system abroad. Holland and
Belgium, on which it had been imposed when those countries were seized
by France in 1792 and 1795, retained it after the peace of 1814-1815; at
least the old systems had been destroyed, and it was deemed best to
retain the new one, so in 1821 it was compulsory.
The new kingdom of Italy threw away the remains of its metric
inheritance from ancient Rome when in 1859 it took the French system,
partly perhaps from the apparent difficulty of co-ordinating the
measures of the different states, but probably as part consideration for
French help against Austria.
Portugal adopted it, on paper at least, in 1863.
The worst was when, in 1868, it was adopted by the North German
Confederated States, and when in 1872 it was made compulsory.
It is said that the governing powers of Germany, anxious to unify the
diverse systems of its component states, took the fatal step in
consequence of English official assurances that the metric system would
soon be imposed on the British empire. After this disastrous surrender
to international science, the governments of other countries, large and
small, civilised and semi-barbarous, were easily induced by skilful
diplomacy to impose the French republican measures on their peoples,
heedless of the fact that all the persuasion and pressure of the French
government had failed to get its own people to use the system whenever
it could be evaded.
Herbert Spencer says, of the progress of the metric system:
When fifty years after its nominal establishment in France the
metric system was made compulsory, it was not because those who
had to measure out commodities over the counter wished to use
it, but because the government commanded them to do so, and when
it was adopted in Germany under the Bismarckian regime we may be
sure that the opinions of shop-keepers were not asked. Similarly
elsewhere, its adoption has resulted from the official will and
not from the popular will.
The gradual adoption of the metric system by countries of all degrees of
civilisation from Germany and Italy to Venezuela or Haïti, has not been
from any desire of the people of those countries for it, except an
infinitely small minority of scientists who desire that the whole world
should use the system found convenient in international scientific
reports, and a somewhat larger proportion of enthusiasts with high and
unpractical cosmopolitan ideals. Many also acquiesce from the same
motive which induces people to buy a well-advertised and puffed article
instead of one to which they had been accustomed and had found
satisfactory. They undergo the contagion to which the crowd-mind is so
subject. In England a few genuine enthusiasts, and many more who have
caught the scientific and cosmopolitan craze, take to the metric system
as they take to learning Esperanto, and so long as they have not to use
the one in business or the other in conversation, their enthusiasm
lasts, especially when it affords opportunities for showing themselves
friends of science and progress. But when the contagion spreads so wide
that it threatens to revolutionise the habits and customs of a nation
and its whole manufactures and trade, the danger is most serious.
The favour which the metric system has found amongst a small proportion
of English people is largely due to their ignorance of their own system,
an ignorance very excusable when there exists no official statement of
our system, or even of its standards. The people are left to the
information afforded very badly in school-books and scarcely better in
almanacks. So our system is left without defence against the attacks
made on it by well-meaning persons who do not know it, and by the
never-ceasing action of the French government.[57] It may therefore be
interesting to see
_How far the French have adopted the Metric System._
Footnote 57:
Aided greatly by the Alliance Française, an association formed, under
government patronage, ‘to extend the political and moral power of
France ... and make pacific conquests abroad by its superior
civilisation.’ Every member of it abroad is bound to promote this
cause.
A century of official pressure, of state-education, and of police
proceedings against any public selling, marking or crying of goods
otherwise than in metric measures and coins, cannot be without some
effect, especially in large towns, but even there, while accounts are
kept and bills made according to the legal system, the people, as
distinguished from the official classes, have never taken to it, and in
the country it is nearly entirely ignored, out of official transactions,
both in weight and measures and in money.
The sizes of baskets and flower-pots are in _pouces_; lamp-chimneys have
their size marked on them in _lignes_. The size of printer’s type is in
points, each 1/6 line or 1/72 of the old French inch; and the printer’s
pocket-rule is divided on one side into centimetres but on the other
into ‘Ciceros’ corresponding to the English ‘pica.’
Barometers for ship-use have their scale usually in pouces and lignes.
The port barometer on the quay of the great naval port of Toulon, in
front of the town-hall, is on this old scale. In 1909 I found the
barometer of a new Transatlantique passenger steamer making her first
voyage to be ‘selon Torricelly,’ with its scale in the old _pouces_, 28
= 29·87 English inches.
The sounding line of French ships is in brasses of 5 old French feet,
the cable is of 120 brasses, the knot is, as with us, 1/120 of the
nautical mile of 1852 metres; the kilometre being absolutely ignored.
In Southern France the lengths of boats, as at regattas, is stated in
páns, taken at 1/4 metre.
Wine is sold wholesale by the queue, by the barrique, by the feuillette.
A barrique or piece of Bordeaux wine is 228 litres, of Burgundy 212
litres. Trade-units are as common in France as in England.
The housewife continues to ask for a four-pound loaf, a _pain de quatre
livres_, for a _livre_ of sugar, for a _demi-livre_ of coffee, for _un
quart_ of chicory, for a _demi-quart_ or for _une once_ of pepper. In
the market-place, in the streets fruit is openly cried at _quatre sous
la livre!_ or _deux sous le quart!_ when no policeman is within hearing,
and the police are discreetly deaf, even in Paris, except when ordered
to be more vigilant; but then they kindly give a hint to the
costermongers and street-traders and, after a few days of conformity to
the law, the cries go on as before.
The grocer does not ticket his wares by the kilo, rarely even by the
demi-kilo; he wisely tickets them with a simple 50, or 75, or 80, which
means 5_d._, 7-1/2_d._, 8_d._, in coin, 10, 15, 16 sous, for a weight
which is not mentioned but is understood to be _une livre_, and which
can be halved and quartered down to an ounce. He finds that his
customers are thus better pleased than if the ticket had ‘1/2 kilo’
marked on it, and he knows that they would be repelled if the price was
by the kilo. About the only exception is when the price of goods cannot
be expressed in centimes; thus if potatoes are less than, say, 2 sous a
pound, the greengrocer has to ticket them ‘15 le kilo,’ 2 pounds for 3
sous. The practical non-existence of the centime, and the refusal of
government to coin half-sous or farthings of 2-1/2 centimes, obliges him
thus exceptionally to use the word ‘kilo.’
When a _quart_, a quarter-lb., say of coffee, is asked for, the grocer
has to put into the scale three weights, of 100, 20 and 5 grammes, for a
demi-livre two weights of 200 and 50 grammes, instead of being able to
use a single half- or quarter-pound weight as under the Napoleonic
compromise. For an ounce he gives 30 grammes.
In country towns goods are often openly ticketed in sous; I have even
seen ‘six liards,’ six half-farthings, two for three-halfpence, as the
marked price. In the South books and newspapers sometimes have the price
boldly printed in sous, ‘20 sous,’ &c. In large shops, especially where
there is a cash-desk, the salesmen have trained themselves to speak only
of francs and centimes, but the smaller shopkeepers, even in Paris,
usually say their prices in sous, at least for prices under two or three
francs.
The peasant bargains for cattle in écus (half-crowns) or in pistoles of
10 francs; wages of farm labourers are still often in écus. Land is
reckoned in the old measures according to local custom, and tables of
these measures, with their metric equivalents, are given in the ‘Usages
Locaux’ published for the use of _juges de paix_ and other officials.
Farms to let and land for sale are frequently advertised in these local
measures. If the extent is given in hectares, the local equivalent in
vergées, seterées, &c., is added. I have such advertisements of recent
date.
The master of a government school in Normandy advertised the sale of his
haystack by auction. The advertisement (in a newspaper of 1906, now
before me) gave the weight of the hay as ‘5000 kilos (10,000 livres).’
He knew that the fathers of his pupils understood, as well as he did, a
kilo to be 2 pounds, but he also knew that they would be much readier to
bid if the weight was stated in pounds.
Market-prices of agricultural produce are frequently stated by
newspapers in the old measures; that of apples is constantly recorded by
the barattée, literally the churnful, about equal to our bushel.
The old agrarian measures are used quite close to Paris. I ask a farmer,
not six miles from Paris, how much land he has, and he, knowing me to be
‘safe,’ says so many estrées. How much is an estrée? 1600 square toises
is his answer.
I take up a Paris daily paper and see several advertisements of mushroom
farms for sale, in the old quarries near Paris; the area of these is
always given in toises.
Direct inquiries will always be answered most favourably to the metric
system. The peasant’s caution will rarely let the inquirer detect his
love of the old weights and measures, quite convenient to him. And the
bourgeois, proud of his superior education and glorying in the triumphs
of the metric system abroad, ignores the existence of any but the legal
system; he is blind and deaf to the constant evidence which strikes the
unprejudiced observer.
The doctor and the druggist would indignantly deny using any other than
metric measures, but they have their professional units, necessarily on
a gramme basis, though in figures corresponding to ounces, tablespoons,
drachms, scruples and grains; drops (which are actually dropped, not
measured) are prescribed, and the mixture is always made up to a total
of so many ounces of 30 grammes. And the pharmacien, who is able to read
through the frequent ambiguities of prescriptions written in grammes,
centigrammes, &c., very likely to be confused, puts the mixture up in
bottles which are moulded to show tablespoons of 15 grammes, that is
half-ounces.
The druggists’ price lists give quantities in units of 30, 125, 250, 500
grammes or cubic centimetres, that is in quantities of 1, 4, 8, 16
ounces; and these are the quantities in which he usually sells drugs to
his customers.
Thus in France there is a chronic struggle between the law and the
people; the system of weights and measures was devised there, not for
the convenience of the people, but to suit a decimal theory dear to the
mathematical and bureaucratic mind; the people must make their
convenience fit the system, and it is only by evasions and subterfuges
that it can be made to fit, even approximately. The trader has to evade
the law if he wishes to retain his customers. The manufacturer, not
keeping an open shop, finds evasion easier, and all the circulars
addressed by the government to Chambers of Commerce begging them to
support the metric system remain without effect. A few months ago a
circular deplored the practice of selling and buying silkworms’ eggs by
the ounce. Recently a circular forbade professors and schoolmasters to
utter the names of the old weights, measures or coins, or to allow their
pupils to utter them.
The instances I have given of the failure of all the efforts to make the
French people take to the metric system are entirely from my personal
observation. I conclude them with an extract from Messrs. Halsey and
Dale’s ‘The Metric Fallacy’ (New York, 1904) on the failure to convert
manufacturers to the system:
The reasons for the failure of this colossal effort of a century
to change the textile weights and measures of France is not
difficult to find. The ideas of length, area, volume and weight
are as firmly grounded as any that find a lodging in the mind of
man. They are bound to the records of the past, to the work of
the present, and to the plans for the future. They are
ineffaceably imprinted upon the mind of every child to regulate
his ideas of extension and weight as long as life may last.
These natural conditions are alone sufficient to account for the
failure of the metric system in France. Other influences have
however served to make the failure more complete in the textile
industry. The metric system needed something more than the
transcendent mathematical faculties of its designers to make it
suitable for textile measurements.
The eminent scientists who designed that system were able to
solve the most difficult problems in higher mathematics, but
failed to comprehend what system of weights and measures was
best suited for the carder, spinner, weaver and finisher of
wool, cotton, linen and silk. The glamor of their fame failed to
make the centimetre suitable for counting ‘picks.’ Their system
had to stand or fall on its merits, and falling has proved that
the highest of mathematical abilities is not inconsistent with a
dense ignorance of the practical affairs of every-day life.
I strongly recommend Messrs. Halsey and Dale’s book to those who wish to
know the opinion of American engineers and manufacturers on the metric
system.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
CHAPTER XXIV
THE CONFLICT OF THE IMPERIAL AND METRIC
SYSTEMS
Two systems are face to face throughout the West—the Imperial system
resting on long custom and on convenience, and the Metric system on an
assumption of science and on revolt against the past. It has been shown
that the system which pretends to be the only scientific one, and the
easiest, is a failure even in France; but there, like the republic which
gave it birth, it is, under the influence of patriotism or national
pride, strong for attack abroad while in a state of anarchy at home,
worrying manufacturers and evaded in trade whenever police-force fails
to have jurisdiction or deems it prudent not to prosecute.
The one makes men fit the measures however inconvenient; the other makes
measures to fit those who have to use them. The one attacks; the other
apposes a passive resistance.
Let us take a general view of the system attacked.
1. GENERAL VIEW OF THE IMPERIAL SYSTEM
The Imperial system of Weights and Measures rests on principles quite as
rational and scientific as those of the Metric system, and it is much
more practical.
All its series are derived from the English talent, a weight two-thirds
of the Roman-Alexandrian talent which was derived from the royal cubit
and foot of ancient Egypt.
The original system, of at least ten centuries ago, was as follows:
_Length._—The foot was the measure of the side of a cubic vessel
containing 1000 Roman ounces of water.
The furlong became at a very early period a length of 40 rods = 220
yards.
The mile, originally 5000 Roman feet, became 5000 English feet, divided
into 8 road-furlongs.
_Surface._—The acre was one-tenth of the square furlong.
_Capacity._—The wine-bushel was the cubic foot, the measure of 1000
ounces of wine or water. 1/8 of it was the wine-gallon = 1728/8 or 216
cubic inches.
The corn-bushel was 1-1/4 cubic feet, the measure of 1000 oz. = 62-1/2
lb. of wheat; 1/8 of it was the corn-gallon = 270 c.i.
_Weight._—The pound was 16 Roman ounces = 6992 grains. Its multiples
were the 16-lb. stone, the wey of 16 stones, and the true cwt. of 100
lb.
This excellent system has become, after many disturbances, the Imperial
system, only differing from the old English system in the following
points:
1. The slight rise of the pound (by 8 grains) to 7000 grains.
2. The rise of the wine-gallon to 231 c.i. as now used in America.
3. The unification of the wine- and corn-gallons (the latter still used
in America at the standard of 268·8 c.i.) in the Imperial gallon =
277-1/4 c.i. = 10 lb. water.
4. The fixing of the mile at 8 roods or field-furlongs of 220 yards.
5. The optional decimalisation of several series:
(_a_) Of the furlong at 10 chains, of the square furlong at 100
sq. chains, and of the acre at 10 sq. chains.
(_b_) Of weights by the 10-lb. gallon and the 100-lb. cental.
(_c_) Of the ton-register of 100 cubic feet = 100,000 ounces of
water.
6. The disappearance of the Troy pound. The Troy ounce must shortly
disappear; the 112-lb. cwt. and its stone-divisions are optional.
The Imperial Standards are now:
_Length._—The Foot, approximately the side of a cubic vessel containing
1000 ounces of water. The yard of 3 feet or 36 inches.
The Furlong is 220 yards, either—
10 chains of 66 feet or 22 yards, or 40 rods of 5-1/2 yards.
The Mile is 8 furlongs = 1760 yards.
The Nautical mile is 1000 Olympic fathoms = 6080 feet or 2026-2/3 yards.
_Surface._—The square furlong is 10 acres; the acre is 10 sq. chains, or
4840 sq. yards, and may be divided into 160 sq. rods.
_Volume._—The cubic foot is approximately 1000 ounces of water, = 62-1/2
lb. The Ton-register is 100 cubic feet.
_Weight._—The pound, of 7000 grains, is divided into 16 ounces of
437-1/2 grains.
The Gallon of water weighs 10 lb.
The Cental is 100 lb.
The Ton is 20 long Cwt. of 112 lb.
_Capacity._—The Imperial gallon = 277-1/4 c.i. contains exactly 10 lb.
of water, or approximately 8 lb. of wheat. It is divided into 8 pints
containing 20 oz. of water or 16 oz. of wheat. The Bushel, of 8 gallons,
contains 64 lb. of wheat.[58] The Quarter is 8 bushels, which is
approximately the quarter, either of a short ton, 20 centals, of wheat,
or of a freight-ton of 40 cubic feet.
Footnote 58:
The system of the United States only differs from the Imperial system
in its retention of the wine-gallon = 231 c.i. and of the corn-gallon
= 268·8 c.i.; and in its rejection of the long cwt. for the cental.
The principal units, foot, pound, gallon, are connected by their common
origin in the talent of 1000 ounces of water. Corrections are needed for
accuracy since the pound was increased in Elizabethan times by a little
more than 1 per 1000 from its original Roman standard, and since the
bushel and gallon were increased by 3 per cent. from the original
corn-measure to the Imperial standard.
The co-related units, foot, furlong, acre, pound, gallon, are multiplied
and divided by the factors found by long use to be the most convenient
to the people. When no other influence determines the secondary units,
the usual factor is 8, or its double, its half, its quarter.
Any unit may be decimalised for purposes of calculation, and several
series have alternative decimal series. Thus—
Itinerary and Land measures were decimalised three centuries ago
by the chain-series.
The Ton-register of 100 cubic feet, used throughout the world,
has a complete decimal series of divisions.
The pound-gallon-cental series are fully decimalised, from the
100-lb. cental down to the septem, 1/1000 of a pound.
A decimal series of weights from the pound upwards is perfectly lawful.
It may be confidently expected that it will before long replace for most
purposes the stone and long-hundredweight series imposed in the
fourteenth century, and fought against ever since.
Apothecaries’ weight, abolished by the Medical Council half a century
ago, still lingers in the Board of Trade list of standards. Mint-weight
is still on the Troy system. The half-crown is one grain less than an
Imperial half-ounce. It may be hoped that it, and other silver coins,
will before long be brought exactly to that standard. Already the bronze
penny is one-third of the Imperial ounce.
Further improvements will be made. Some adjustment of the inconvenient
112-lb. hundredweight with the cental series, that of our ancient
hundredweight, returned to us from America, will probably be effected.
In the meantime we know that our system is progressive.
It may not have such a scientific appearance as that of the metric
system. But we must not be dazzled by the word ‘scientific.’ Our system
has its series related with sufficient exactness to have practically as
much unity as the metric system; and it is convenient. Let us
distinguish between science and pedantry.
2. THE PROPAGANDA OF THE METRIC SYSTEM
I have read many books and many articles and letters in newspapers and
scientific periodicals advocating the compulsory use of the metric
system, optional amongst us since 1897, but which no trade, industry or
profession will adopt, and I have almost invariably found that the
writers knew the metric system imperfectly, and always that they knew
their own very badly. I have found their advocacy illustrated by
examples of problems in imperial weight and measure which showed
defective instruction in the art of cyphering and supported by
statements which were misleading and only to be charitably excused on
the ground of ignorance.[59] Too often opponents of their propaganda are
sneered at as wanting in scientific knowledge, business experience, and
common sense.
Footnote 59:
For instance, in _The Coming of the Kilogram_ (H. O. Arnold-Forster)
the problem ‘How many times is 1 grain contained in 1 ton?’ is worked
out in a half-page of figures. It can be done in 15 seconds, almost
mentally. A cwt. is 112 lb.; a ton is 2240 lb.; multiply by 7000.
Answer: 15,680,000 grains (or times).
The propaganda of the metric system is effected, from abroad by
diplomacy, and from within by—
1. Calling it ‘antiquated,’ a term which might be applied to Law, to
Religion, to Marriage, to Property, and other ancient institutions.
2. Calling it ‘irrational,’ when it has that great reason which comes
from custom, convenience, improvement in recent times.
3. Calling it ‘unscientific,’ when it joins to popular convenience the
option of decimalisation, whenever that is found convenient, in addition
to the alternate decimalisation already established in several series.
4. Putting forward as current certain weights, such as the Troy pound,
long ago obsolete.
5. Putting forward as legal measures trade-units, such as the cask, the
sack, &c., used for convenience in trade, as much in metric countries as
with us.[60]
6. Putting forward, as necessary, sums and calculations which a decently
taught schoolboy would laugh at.
7. Ignoring all that is convenient in our system and all that is
inconvenient in the metric system.
8. Ignoring the satisfaction of the people of the United States with our
system, even when retaining the old wine-gallon and corn-gallon.
9. Ignoring the resistance of the French people to the metric system
after a century of education in it and of police-constraint.
10. Urging us to follow the example of other countries that have adopted
it, but omitting to find out whether the peoples of these countries,
from civilised Germany to barbarous Haïti, use it—so far as they do use
it—otherwise than under compulsion. It is the governments of these
countries, not the people, that have adopted it, always in the name of
Science; and the day police-pressure were taken off, the old system
would return, or, at the least, the decimal series would disappear.
11. Threatening loss of foreign trade, when our trade weights and
measures are so well understood by foreign manufacturers and merchants
that they find no difficulty in placing their goods on our market, and
are so well known that many foreign manufacturers find it impossible to
use metric standards, those of England being alone accepted in most of
the markets to which British manufactures are exported.
12. Calling opponents prejudiced, unprogressive, unscientific, wanting
in business experience and common sense.
Footnote 60:
I have even seen it put forward (in a book now before me) that our
system has several bushels, indeed thirty is the number given; the
ground for this assertion being that bushels of wheat, of oats, or
peas, &c., are of different weights. The propagandist supposed no one
would think of answering that it is the same with the Hectolitre,
which contains different weights of different grains.
Such are the arguments used in the propaganda of a system which would
make much of the past life of our country unintelligible, send most of
its manufacturing machinery to the scrap-heap, dislocate trade for years
and bring about in our country the same struggle that is still to be
seen in France between the law and the people.
The claims of the metric system are exactly on the same basis as those
of the Esperanto language. If the metric system were made compulsory, an
energetic body of Esperantists might only have to adopt the metric plan
of campaign to get their ‘simple, rational, scientific and
international’ language made first optional, and then, when it was found
that no one would use it, compulsory, while the use of the antiquated
and unscientific English language would be forbidden.
What will be the result of the conflict between the two systems
prevailing about equally in the greater part of the Western world? On
the one side North America, the United Kingdom and its colonies in the
Eastern Hemisphere; on the other side the Latin nations of both
hemispheres with the principal Teutonic nations whose governments have
imposed the French system on them. Russia and several other countries
are awaiting the results of the conflict. But it is a siege rather than
a conflict, for the attack is entirely from France; and though it has
the inherent weakness of its system being a failure in the country of
its origin, yet the defence has the weakness of its people being so
badly instructed in their system that they cannot repel the invasion,
and have even allowed the enemy to take up a legal position in their own
country. The colonial policy of England, the simple plan of respecting
custom, of not interfering needlessly, is very different from that of
France. British colonies that were French or Dutch keep the laws and
customs that we found there, and amongst these their systems of weights
and measures. If these were convenient they remained, trade bringing a
gradual adoption of the English system mixed with local measures; and as
these were on a system more or less common to all the Western nations
before the French Revolution, weights and measures gradually harmonised.
But the policy of France is distinctly aggressive; its colonies must
have French laws and the metric system, and other countries also must be
induced to abolish their systems and replace them by the system which a
century of police-action has not succeeded in making the French people
adopt, and which they evade in every possible way.
Why the propaganda of the metric system should have had any success in
England appears a mystery—yet it is intelligible to anyone who has
observed the contagion of opinions, even the wildest. England has been
fascinated by its presentation as scientific and international. This is
a scientific age, and every new thing that can be puffed as ‘scientific’
is likely to take with people unprepared to criticise the science. I
have seen the council of no mean English city induced by the word
‘scientific’ to vote in favour of a petition to make the use of the
metric system compulsory; the few members, not one-tenth of the whole,
who dared to oppose the resolution being called unscientific,
unprogressive, &c.
Repeatedly repulsed, the French siege will not cease its attacks;
England, and America also, must be prepared to meet them.
Although the English-speaking peoples have a system with which they are
satisfied, unfortunately few know its principles; and, in weights and
measures as in other matters, an inferior article well advertised
supplants an old-established and satisfactory article that is not
advertised. If the French people have not revolted long ago against the
system imposed on them by the Paris bureaucracy, it is because it is
thoroughly advertised as scientific, international, and as conquering
the world by the superior civilisation of the French nation. They have
been trained to make almost any sacrifices for the glory of France, and
so long as they can evade the decimal and other inconvenient portions of
the metric system they suffer this patiently for the satisfaction it
gives to their patriotic feelings.
But their government must go on conquering, or they may strike against a
system which brings in no more glory; as other peoples may when they see
that the English-speaking peoples of the world refuse to be persuaded
into accepting it.
Here is the weak point of the attack. And when the English-speaking
peoples, those of the British Empire and America, are as well instructed
in their good system as the peoples of the metric countries are in the
bad system imposed on them (and which they evade for all the good
teaching of it), the assailants will raise the siege.
We could reply: Amend your own system and make it acceptable to your own
people before you ask us to put aside a system which we find convenient
and which is founded on better principles than ours. Our system has been
carried to all countries; it is decimal wherever decimalisation is
convenient; its international unit is the Ton-register of 100 cubic
feet, or 100,000 ounces, as old as the first civilisation of the world,
as the civilisation which established the Meridian mile used by your
seamen as by ours. We reject an artificial system founded in hatred of
the past, and only kept up in its native country by police-force. In the
name of decimals you want us to abolish our pound, and use a kilogramme
which your own people will not use. It should be enough for you that we
have given your system a denizenship by the abuse of which we have been
greatly annoyed.
3. THE REFORM OF THE METRIC SYSTEM
The defence must be active; then the attack would cease, and the French
people, seeing its failure, would demand a reform of the system imposed
on them; the other nations suffering under it would follow their
example, if indeed the Teutonic peoples did not begin the reaction.
Modifications would be demanded, rendering the metric system less
inconvenient for manufacturers, for trade, for the everyday business of
life.
The metric standards would be retained, but the decimal system would be
optional, left principally for scientific purposes. The divisions and
multiples would be in harmony with the customs of each people, usually
in sexdecimal series.
For France, the _système usuel_ of Napoleon’s compromise would be
revived. Incomplete a century ago, it could be rendered complete by the
following arrangement of the metric system, suitable both to Northern
and to Southern France.
1. The metre to be divided optionally either into 3 feet of 12 inches,
or into 4 spans of 9 inches or 12 digits; 2 metres to be a toise and 10
toises a perch; 100 toises or 10 perches to be a centenié (furlong) and
800 toises or 8 furlongs a mile = 1741-3/4 yards. The meridian mile
would be 926 toises or 9-1/4 cables.
2. Land to be measured by the square toise, 1/25 of an are; 1600 square
toises to be an arpent of 16 vergées metriques or boisselées, each 10
toises square, = 4 ares.
3. The livre, = 500 grammes, to be divided commercially into 16 ounces
of 8 drachms; and for medicinal purposes, the drachm to be 8 oboles of 8
grains. Grammes and decimal fractions of a gramme could be used for
scientific purposes.
4. The hectolitre would be divided sexdecimally, into 4 boisseaux, of 4
gallons = 6-1/4 litres. The litre would be divided into 2 setiers or
chopines, 4 half-setiers, and 32 ounces.
The equivalence with imperial measures would be approximately:
1 Metre = 1-1/10 yard.
1 Mille = 1 mile.
1 Vergée = 1/10 acre.
1 Arpent = 1·6 acre.
1 Livre = 1-1/10 lb.
1 Litre = 9/10 quart.
Similar arrangements could be made in other countries, the units being
made in accordance with the old custom of the people, but always on a
metric basis so that international conversion of measures would be easy
and accurate.
ENVOI
With this suggestion of compromise, of _entente cordiale_, instead of
constant aggression by the French system against that of the British
dominions and America, I close the last chapter of my work. I took to it
twelve years ago for useful occupation in the leisure of approaching
retirement from active life in a great seaport. But as I carried out my
design I found the verge of the wide subject recede with every advance I
made; every fresh field I worked showed another field beyond. A renewal
of life for study, travel, observation, would be needed to enable me to
carry out at all completely this history of the human mind in one of its
most interesting and important aspects. But age warns me to bring my
work to a close, leaving its correction and completion to younger men.
Yet I hope I have been able to show the principles of unity and of
diversity; and apparent confusion becomes clear when the keys of
metrology are at hand. The trend of the human mind is always the same;
for weights and measures are a part of the daily life of every man and
woman. The rise of measurement, the naturalisation of weights and
measures brought by commerce, even by conquest, when they are found
convenient, the varieties caused by changes of circumstance, the
deflections under the constraint of ill-advised rulers, the effect of
long custom in reconciling to new standards if they can only be arranged
conveniently, the shifts by which they can be made endurable, the
tendency to resume the old trend along another path—all these traits of
human nature are shown in this study. One thing is certain, that a wise
government sanctions the measures which fit its people; its business is
to maintain unity in the inevitable variety; and it should distrust the
pretensions of science to dictate to men and women, to trade and
manufacturers, the measures they shall use. Whether in theocratic
ancient Egypt or in revolutionary modern Europe, science is a good
servant of Humanity, but a bad master.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
CONVERSION TABLES OF METRIC AND IMPERIAL MEASURES
───────────────┬───────────────┬───────────────────
Centimetres │ Grammes │ Kilos ⎫ to 10 lb.
to Inches. │ to Grains. │ Litres⎭ gallons.
───────────────┼───────────────┼───────────────────
1. 0·39370113 │ 1. 15·432356 │ 1. 0·22046
2. 0·78740226 │ 2. 30·864713 │ 2. 0·44092
3. 1·1811339 │ 3. 46·29707 │ 3. 0·66138
4. 1·5748452 │ 4. 61·72942 │ 4. 0·88184
5. 1·9685565 │ 5. 77·16178 │ 5. 1·10231
6. 2·3622678 │ 6. 92·59414 │ 6. 1·32277
7. 2·7559791 │ 7. 108·02649 │ 7. 1·54323
8. 3·1496904 │ 8. 123·45885 │ 8. 1·7637
9. 3·5434017 │ 9. 138·89121 │ 9. 1·98416
───────────────┴───────────────┴───────────────────
IMPERIAL TO METRIC MEASURE
1 inch = 2·54 centim.
1 foot = 30·48 „
1 yard = 91·44 „
1 mile = 1609 metres.
1 sq. yd. = 0·836 sq. metre.
1 sq. rod = 25·3 „
1 sq. rood = 1011 „
1 acre = 0·404 hectare.
1 cubic inch water 252-1/4 grs. = 16·38 c.c. or grammes.
1 „ foot „ 62-1/3 lb. = 28 c. decim. or kilos.
1 grain = 6·48 centigr.
1 ounce = 28·35 grammes.
1 lb. = 453·59 „
1 gallon = 4·536 litres.
1 bushel = 36-1/3 „
1 quarter = 2·91 hectol.
1 ton = 1016 kilos.
1 hectolitre = 2-2/3 bushels.
3 „ = 1·03 quarter.
1 „ to the hectare = 1-1/9 bushel to 1 acre.
1000 kilos to the hectare = 0·4 ton to 1 acre.
1 franc a hectolitre = 3·6 pence a bushel.
1 franc 100 kilos = 22-1/2 pence a quarter. 98 pence a ton.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
INDEX
Acre, 72, 74, 78, 87
Acreme, 81
Ale-gallon, 117
Apothecaries’ weight, 140
Arshīn, 215
As, 38, 94
Austria, W. & M., 208, 220
Averdepois, 93, 99
Bath, 239
Bereh, 27, 238
Bovate, 80, 89
Bread-weight, 128, 138
Burma and the Straits, W. & M., 173
Bushel, old and of U.S., 96;
Winchester, 119;
Imperial, 124
Canada and Mauritius, W. & M., 173
Carat, 35, 245; v. Qirát
Carucate, 82, 89
Cask-measures, 116
Cental, 45, 109
Chain, 64, 73
Chaldron, 120, 122
Channel Islands, W. & M., 157
Clove, 107, 110, 242
Coal-measure, 122
Corn-measure, 122
Cubit, natural, 1;
Egyptian common, or Olympic, 2, 14;
Egyptian royal, 18;
Great Assyrian or Persian, 23;
Beládi, 25;
Talmudic, 27, 238;
Black, Al-Mamūn’s, 28;
Hashími, 214
Customs of Lancaster, 88
Decimal system, 5, 182, 188
Denmark, W. & M., 221
Density, measures of, 198;
of water, 146
Digit, 1, 4
Dirhem, 45, 222
Drachm, 105, 135
Drachma, 41, 43, 221
Dram, 103
Duodecimal system, 5
Egypt, modern, W. & M., 67, 213, 220, 235
Ell, 62, 202
England, linear measures, 58;
land-measures, 65;
wine-measures, 114;
corn-measures, 118;
commercial weights, 93;
mint-weights, 127, 250;
money, 174
Epha, 239
Fathom, Olympic, 6, 15
Firkin, 116
Foot, origin of, 4;
Olympic, 4;
Egyptian royal, 12;
Assyrian, 25;
Beládi, 26;
Burgos, 26, 211;
Black, 29;
Roman, 18;
English, 49, 60;
Rhineland, 52;
Hanseatic, 207;
Amsterdam, 207;
French, 259;
French reduced, 159, 261
Fother, 111, 252
Fotmal, 112
France, W. & M., Southern, 253;
Northern, 259;
Metric, 271
Furlong, 63, 81
Gallon, Wine, 114;
Corn, 119;
Imperial, 123
Germany, W. & M., 206, 219, 225, 228
Gill, 125
Grain, 103, 245, 249
Greece, ancient, W. & M., 17, 68;
Coin-weights, 43
Guernsey, W. & M., 157;
Currency, 183
Hand, 61
Heat, measures of, 197
Hebrew, W. & M., 237
Hide, 81
Holland, W. & M., 207, 218, 228
Homer of corn, 90, 230
Hundredweight, 94, 105
Imperial bushel, 123;
gallon, 123;
pound, 102;
system, 295
Inch, 4, 18, 59, 244
India, W. & M., 167;
money, 184
Ireland, acre and mile, 74;
gallon, 155
Italy, W. & M., 208, 223, 237
Kilderkin, 116
Knot, 16
Land-measures, Egyptian, 67;
Greek, 67;
Roman, 68;
English, 71
Last, 105, 143
Lead-weight, 111
League, 64
Leaguer, leggar, 167, 231
Libra, 40, 94
Load, 107
Marc, 127, 130
Medicinal weights, 104;
measures, 126
Medimnos, 34
Metretes, 37
Metric system, 271;
working of, 284;
reform of, 306
Mile, meridian, 15;
equatorial, 16;
Roman, 17;
English, 63;
of time, 193
Miná, 33
Mithkal, 94, 221
Modius, 40
Nail, 58, 111, 242
Norway, W. & M., 132, 206, 209
Octonary system, 5, 124
Ounce, Roman, 38, 40;
Averdepois, 93;
Imperial, 102;
Tower, 95, 127;
Troy, 98
Oxgang, 66
Palm, 4, 19, 61, 209
Pán, 53
Parasang, 16
Penny, 95; pennyweight, 128
Pint, wine, 115;
ale, 118;
Imperial, 125
Ploughland, 82
Portugal, measures, 212, 234
Pound, Roman, 38, 94;
Averdepois, 93, 133;
Imperial, 102;
Tower, 127;
Troy, 129;
Scots, 139;
Amsterdam, 218;
Mediterranean, 220;
Nuremburg, 225;
Cologne, 225;
French, 258
Pound sterling, 174
Qasáb, 25, 215
Qirát, 221
Quadrantal, 39, 50
Quarter, 96, 105, 120, 145
Rod, 62, 77, 84
Roman W. & M., 38, 68
Rood, 71, 78
Rotl, 45, 223
Rūba, Arroba, 224, 248
Scotland, W. & M., 147;
acre and mile, 74
Scruple, 40, 105, 135
Seed-measures of land, 90
Sexdecimal system, 5
Shaftment, 61
Shekel, 31, 33
South Africa, W. & M., 166
Spain, W. & M., 210, 225, 233
Sterling, 95
Stone, 94, 105, 110
Sweden W. & M., 206, 220
Tables—
Olympic measures of length, 17
The five ancient cubits, 30
Roman weights and measures of capacity, 41
British miles and acres, 74
Provençal corn and land-measures, 92
English measures of capacity, 125
Standard of various Troy weights, 132
Concordance of capacity, weight and measurement, 144
Volume and weight of water, 146
Marseilles and Jersey measures of capacity, 162
Specific gravity scales of spirits, 200
European itinerary measures, 217
Ounces and dirhems, 224
Original weight of dirhems, 226
Old French measures, 267
Conversion of Metric and Imperial W. & M., 309
Talent, Alexandrian, 33;
Ptolemaïc, 35;
Greek-Asiatic, 36;
Olympic, 42;
Arabic, 44
Thermometer-scales, 197
Time, measures of, 189
Toise, 260
Ton, 96, 105;
register, 143;
cargo, 144
Tower-weight, 95, 127
Troy-weight, 129
Tun, 116, 252
Tunis, W. & M., 214, 221, 233
Turkey, W. & M., 213, 222, 235
Velte, 115, 230, 265
Verge, 78, 83, 160
Vergée, 78, 160
Virgate, 76, 80, 89
Wales, measures, 156
Wey, 94, 105
Winchester bushel, 119
Wine-gallon, 114
Wool-weight, 109
Yard, 58, 83
Yardland, 66, 80
_Spottiswoode & Co. Ltd., Printers, Colchester, London and Eton._
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Transcriber’s note:
Errata, ‘last’ changed to ‘Last,’ “„ 306 _Last line_ „ “our” „ “yours.””
Page 72, ‘od’ changed to ‘rod,’ “instead of the measuring rod”
Page 90, ‘sétier’ changed to ‘setier,’ “the variable setier of
seed-corn”
Page 92, ‘„’ inserted before ‘10,’ “Cosso (Sc. Lug.) „ 10”
Page 145, decimal struck before ‘1-1/4,’ “20 [oz] = 1-1/4 [lb]”
Page 167, ‘Moghul’ changed to ‘Mogul,’ “Moslem conquerors, Mogul and
Pathan”
Page 187, ‘filus’ changed to ‘filūs,’ “filūs), followed by ‘XX cash.’”
Page 193, ‘t me requ red’ changed to ‘time required,’ “unit was the time
required to walk”
Page 195, ‘epact’ changed to ‘Epact,’ “increase of the Epact during”
Page 198, ‘densit’ changed to ‘density,’ “The maximum density of water”
Page 198, ‘double’ changed to ‘halve,’ “Deduct 32°; halve the degrees;
add”
Page 198, hyphen moved from before ‘body’ to after, “Normal
body-temperature is taken”
Page 201, ‘er ai’ changed to ‘certain,’ “certain distance in a certain
time”
Page 222, dittos replaced with original text, “is 144 dirhems of 47·66
grs.”
Page 224, ‘ruba’ changed to ‘rūba,’ “divided into 4 rūba and”
Page 252, ‘onomatopæic’ changed to ‘onomatopœic,’ “belong to an
onomatopœic class”
Page 255, ‘gallons’ value inserted for ‘Spain,’
“Spain, 64·55 „ 14·23 „”
Page 282, ‘decimales’ changed to ‘décimales,’ “à 2 heures 10 minutes
décimales”
Page 299, ‘alterative’ changed to ‘alternative,’ “have alternative
decimal series”