Page:British Weights and Measures - Superior to the Metric, by James W. Evans.djvu/36

28 ; people “would think it an interference with existing modes of computation, without corresponding advantage; they would regard it as capricious; they would not see the advantage of it.” He went on to say that, judging from the experience of foreign countries, the amount of resistance in the United Kingdom “would be insuperable; other nations are more accustomed to being dragooned into changes than we are.”

Professor H. Hennessy, F.R.S., of Dublin, though an advocate of change, assented that usage was more powerful in England than in other countries, and was careful, despite his fondness for the metric system, to urge caution in bringing any alteration about, for he said“The comparative independence of their government with which the people of England generally act, would render it desirable to have the system introduced in as persuasive a form as possible at first.”

Sir G. B. Airy recognised the trouble there would be “in buying uniformity at the price of enormous inconvenience,” and said, “the trouble of the change would be so great that people would see no advantage in it at all.” He also declared“I do not think you could enforce the change in weights and measures. I think the people generally will go on with halves and quarters, and in that case I say you cannot do it. . . . . They would say at once it was a thing from which they derived no beneﬁt, and from which they would sustain a good deal of inconvenience.”

Seiss, in strong terms, held that “the adoption of the French system by us would be practically and profoundly oppressive. It would cause a century or more of confusion