Page:British Weights and Measures - Superior to the Metric, by James W. Evans.djvu/22

14 Suppose the metric system be adopted. Obviously at once confusion would arise in every counting house, every shop, every place concerned in trade. It would not be easy to throw off old and familiar methods. It has been sensibly pointed out that "people in trade, away from school a few years, get wedded to their habits, and their minds are accustomed to other calculations, fractional parts of the integer, reckoning half pence and pence in the pound, and they would kick against the change, because they would have to turn themselves inside out, and get rid of all they had known before and take up a new system."

Imagine in a mercantile ofﬁce a skilled accountant working by the present mode, having sent to him as an assistant one who knew nothing but the metric system. To say that each should have to learn both methods, scarcely forms a recommendation, nor furnishes an argument in support of the contention that the change would be a simple operation.

Preceding the Revolution in France, there occurred a political change in the relations of the Anglo-Saxon race destined to have a world-wide effect. Discontent was succeeded by an appeal to arms, which ended in the establishment of the great republic of the United States of America. Then, and for a long time after, there existed bad feeling on both sides. The Americans,