Page:British Weights and Measures - Superior to the Metric, by James W. Evans.djvu/28

20 Jackson thus states his opinion: "For any country possessing a good single natural system of weights and measures, it [the metric] is a snare and a delusion, that much resembles the soufflèe, the fondant, the champagne-mousseux. the crinoline, and other French inventions of puerile type. As a universal commercial system it is deﬁcient, from the fact of its being decimal, for most commercial nations and races are essentially binary in habit and form of thought."

It would be superﬂuous to add to the criticisms passed upon the evident unsuitableness of the metre as a unit. The quotations given are fairly representative of what has been written upon that point, but the concluding words in the extract given from Jackson's work leads to the consideration of another feature of the question.

It is incontrovertible that in dealing with the division of material substances, the binary scale comes into mental and practical play as easy and convenient. Not all the specious pleas of those who advocate the so-called reform can turn us from it. Its advantages over the decimal system in all the operations of every day life are apparent. Yet it will be convenient at this juncture to put in evidence some interesting records upon this phase of the matter.

In the second report of the Standards Commission, presented to the House of Commons in 1869, it is stated:"The natural inclination of the mind to half