a weight. Thus the gallon of wheat and the gallon of wine, though of different dimensions, balance each other as weights. A gallon of wheat and a gallon of wine, each, weigh eight pounds avoirdupois. This observation applies, however, only to the original principle of the English system, and not altogether to its present condition. The difference between the specific gravity of wheat and wine, is still the difference between the troy and avoirdupois weights, but not between the wine and corn gallons. A third vessel of capacity, for which neither the necessity nor the use is perceived, has usurped the place of the corn gallon; and it has been shown how it was introduced. The acts of parliament prescribing the dimensions of the bushel and of the wine gallon in cubic inches, have assumed them from existing standards, or erroneous calculations: and the proportions between the measures of corn and of wine, which belonged originally to the system, are now transferred to those of wine and beer, for which, if the reason was that beer being a home made liquor and wine a foreign production, beer a comfort of the poor, and wine a luxury of the rich, the former ought to be dealt out in larger portions, and more lightly touched with taxation, it proceeded from the best motives of political morality; but which might have been as well accomplished by reducing the tax as by enlarging the measure. As vessels of capacity for fluids, there can be no useful reason for different measure, except the proportion of specific gravities.

In the English system, the smaller of the two weights was originally also identical with the coin: a pound of the weight was a pound sterling in silver money. But this property it has irrecoverably lost.

In the French system, the weight is not a coin; but the metallic coins are weights. Gold, silver, mixed metal, and copper, are all coined in proportions of weight and relative value prescribed by law.

In our monetary system we have discarded the last trace of identity between weights and coins, by ceasing to apply to money the name of pound or penny. Our coins are of prescribed weight and purity, but in no convenient or uniform proportions to each other.

In the English system the two weights are standards of verification to each other; the two pounds being in the proportion to each other of 144 to 175, and the pound avoirdupois being of 7,000 grains troy. For quantities amounting to one fourth of a hundred pounds or more, the English avoirdupois weight requires an accession of 12 per cent.; 28 pounds pass for 25, 56 for 50, and 112 for 100. The original motive for this must have been the convenience of dividing the hundred into halves, quarters, eighths, and sixteenths, without making fractions of a pound. The true hundred can thus be divided into no whole number less than a quarter, or 25.

In the English system, the standard linear measure is connected with the weights by the specific gravity of spring water, of which a measure of one cubic foot contains one thousand ounces avoirdupois.

In the French system, the standard linear measure is connected with the weight and the measure of capacity, by the specific gravity of distilled water, at its greatest density, one cubic decimetre of such

water being the weight of the kilogramme, and filling the measure of the litre.

In the English system, every weight and every measure is divided by different and, seemingly, arbitrary numbers; the foot into twelve inches; the inch, by law, into three barley corns, in practice sometimes into halves, quarters, and eighths, sometimes into decimal parts, and sometimes into twelve lines; the pound avoirdupois into sixteen ounces, and the pound troy into twelve, so that while the pound avoirdupois is heavier, its ounce is lighter than those of the troy weight. The ton, in the English system, is both a weight and a measure. As a measure, it is divided into four quarters, the quarter into eight bushels, the bushel into four pecks, &c. As a weight, it is divided into twenty hundreds, of 112 pounds, or 2240 pounds avoirdupois. The gallon is divided into four quarts, the quart into two pints, and the pint into four gills.

In the French system, decimal divisions were prescribed by law exclusively. The binary division was allowed, as being compatible with it: but all others were rigorously excluded; no thirds, no fourths, no sixths, no eighths, or twelfths. But this part of the system has been abandoned: and the people are now allowed all the ancient varieties of multiplication and division, which are still further compli cated by the decimal proportions of the law.

The nomenclature of the English system is full of confusion and absurdity, chiefly arising from the use of the same names to signify different things; the term pound to signify two different weights, a money of account, and a coin; the gallon and quart to signify three different measures; and other improper denominations constantly opening avenues to fraud.

The French nomenclature possesses uniformity in perfection, every word expressing the unit weight or measure which it represents, or the particular multiple or division of it. No two words express the same thing: no two things are signified by the same word.

If, with a view to fixing the standard of weights and measures for the United States, upon the principles of the most extensive uniformity, the question before Congress should be upon the alternative, either to adhere to the system which we possess, or to adopt that of France in its stead, the first position which occurs as unquestionable is, that change, being itself diversity, and therefore the opposite of uniformity, cannot be a means of obtaining it, unless some great and transcendent superiority should demonstrably belong to the new system to be adopted, over the old one to be relinquished.

In what then does the superiority of the French system, in all its novelty and freshness, over that of England, in all its decays, theoretically consist?

1. In an invariable standard of linear measure, taken from nature, and being an aliquot decimal portion of the quarter of the meridian. 2. In having a single unit of all weights, and a single unit of measures of capacity for all substances, liquid or dry.

3. In the universal application of the decimal arithmetic, to the multiples and divisions of all weights and measures.

4. In the convenient proportions by which the coins and money of account are adjusted to each other and to the weights.

5. In the uniformity, precision, and significancy, of the nomenclature.

1. If the project of reforming weights and measures had extended, as was proposed by the French system, to the operations of astronomy, geography, and navigation; if the quadrant of the circle and of the sphere had been divided into one hundred degrees, each of one hundred thousand metres; the assumption of that measure would have been an advantage much more important than it is, or can be, in the present condition of the system. Whether it would have compensated for disturbing that uniformity which exists, and which has invariably existed, of the division into ninety degrees, with sexagesimal subdivisions of minutes and seconds, is merely matter of speculation. At least, it has been found impracticable, even in France, to carry it into effect: and, without it, the metre, as the natural standard of the system, has no sensible advantage over the foot. To a perfect system of uniformity for all weights and measures, an aliquot part of the circumference of the earth is not only a better natural standard unit than the pendulum, or the foot, but it is the only one that could be assumed. Every voyage round the earth is an actual mensuration of its circumference. All navigation is admeasurement: and no perfect theory of weights and measures could be devised, combining in it the principle of decimal computation, of which any other natural standard whatever could accomplish the purpose. Its advantages over the pendulum are palpable. The pendulum bears no proportion to the circumference of the earth, and cannot serve as a standard unit for measuring it. Yet a system of weights and measures, which excludes all geography, astronomy, and navigation, from its consideration, must be essentially defective in the principle of uniformity.

But, if the metre and its decimal divisions are not to be applied to those operations of man, for which it is most especially adapted; if those who circumnavigate the globe in fact are to make no use of it, and to have no concern in its proportions; if their measures are still to be the nonagesimal degree, the marine league, the toise, and the foot; it is surely of little consequence to the farmer who needs a measure for his corn, to the mechanic who builds a house, or to the townsman who buys a pound of meat, or a bottle of wine, to know that the weight, or the measure which he employs, was standarded by the circumference of the globe. For all the uses of weights and measures, in their ordinary application to agriculture, traffic, and the mechanic arts, it is perfectly immaterial what the natural standard, to which they are referable, was. The foot of Hercules, the arm of Henry the First, or the barley-corn, are as sufficient for the purpose as the pendulum, or the quadrant of the meridian. The important question to them is, the correspondence of their weight or measure with the positive standard. With the standard of nature,

from which it is taken, they have no concern, unless they can recur to it as a test of verification. However imperfect for this end the human foot, or the kernel of wheat or barley, may be, they are at least easily accessible. It is a great and important defect of the systems which assume the meridian or the pendulum for their natural standard, that they never can be recurred to without scientific operations.

This is one great advantage which a natural standard, taken from the dimensions and proportions of the human body, has over all others. We are perhaps not aware how often every individual, whose coucerns in life require the constant use of long measures, makes his own person his natural standard, nor how habitually he recurs to it. But the habits of every individual inure him to the comparison of the definite portion of his person, with the existing standard measures to which he is accustomed. There are few English men or women but could give a yard, foot, or inch measure, from their own arms, hands, or fingers, with great accuracy. But they could not give the metre or decimetre, although they should know their dimensions as well as those of the yard and foot. When the Russian General Suwarrow, in his Discourses under the Trigger, said to his troops, "a soldier's step is an arsheen;" he gave every man in the Russian army the natural standard of the long measure of his country. No Russian soldier could ever afterwards be at a loss for an arsheen. But, although it is precisely twenty-eight English inches, being otherwise divided, a Russian soldier would not, without calculation, be able to tell the length of an English yard or inch.

Should the metre be substituted as the standard of our weights and measures, instead of the foot and inch, the natural standard which every man carries with him in his own person would be taken away; and the inconvenience of the want of it would be so sensibly felt, that it would be as soon as possible adapted to the new measures: every man would find the proportions in his own body corresponding to the metre, decimetre, and centimetre, and habituate himself to them as well as he could. If this conjecture be correct, is it not a reason for adhering to that system which was founded upon those proportions, rather than resort to another, which, after all, will bring us back to the standard of nature in ourselves.

2. The advantage of having a single unit of all weights and a single unit of measures of capacity, is so fascinating to a superficial view, that it would almost seem presumption to raise a question, whether it be so great as at first sight it appears. The relative value of all the articles which are bought and sold by measures of capacity, is a complicated estimate of their specific gravity and of the space which they occupy. If both these properties are ascertained by one instrument for any one article, it cannot be applied with the same effect to another. Thus the litre, in the French system, is a measure for all grains and all liquids: but its capacity gives a weight only for distilled water. As a measure of corn, of wine, or of oil, it gives the space which they occupy, but not their weight. Now, as the weight

of those articles is quite as important in the estimate of their quantities as the space which they fill, a system which has two standard units for measures of capacity, but of which each measure gives the same weight of the respective articles, is quite as uniform as that which, of any given article, requires two instruments to show its quantity; one to measure the space it fills, and another for its weight. It has been observed, that nature, in the relations which she has established between man and the earth upon which he dwells, and in providing for the wants resulting to him from these relations, offers him in his own person two natural standards even of linear measure; one for the range of his own movements upon the earth, and the other for articles loosened from the earth, and which are adapted to the immediate wants of his person. He finds by experience that these may with increased convenience be reduced to one. It is not exactly so with weights or measures of capacity. From the moment when man becomes a tiller of the ground, and civil society is organized; from the moment when the mutual exchange between the wants of one and the superfluities of another commences; measures of capacity and weights are necessary to the operation. The use of metals, as common standards of value, is of later origin, and, when first applied to that purpose, they are always delivered by weight. The first and most important article of traffic is corn, the first necessary of life: wine and oil successively come next: milk and honey follow. For all these, weights and measures of capacity are indispensable. When the metals are first used as common instruments of exchange, the proportions of their qualities are estimated by their weight. But that weight could not be ascertained by itself. The metal being in one scale, there must be something else to balance it in the other: and that other substance, first of all, would, whenever it should have come into use for food, be corn. It might next be wine. But thus compared, it would immediately be seen that the vessel containing of wine a counterpoise to the given metallic weight, would not contain a counterpoise of wheat to the same weight: and what could more naturally suggest itself than the device, to bring to the scales the wheat in a measure to balance the weight, and the wine in a measure to produce the same effect? The metallic weight would then become the common standard for both, but would neither be the same weight by which its own gravity had been ascertained, nor a substitute for it. Thus, the operation of weighing implies in its nature the use of two articles, each of which is the standard testing the gravity of the other. And in the difference between the specific gravities of corn and wine, nature has also dictated two standard measures of capacity, each of them equiponderant to the same weight.

This diversity existing in nature, the troy and avoirdupois weights, and the corn and wine measures of the English system are founded upon it. In England it has existed as long as any recorded existence of man upon the island. But the system did not originate there, neither was Charlemagne the author of it. The weights and measures of Rome and of Greece were founded upon it. The Romans