Page:British Weights and Measures - Superior to the Metric, by James W. Evans.djvu/39

Rh nature to think in pounds and yards and gallons. We comprehend exactly what those terms represent; the use of them conveys to the mind familiar ideas and fixed principles. It does not require any keen foresight to picture the confusion that would arise were we to have forced upon us the use of weights and measures, not only having values widely different to those we know, but unfamiliar designations and sub-divisions.

The metric system has called into employment no less than three languages in its terminology—French, Greek, and Latin. The mixture presented may be readily understandable by classical scholars, who have the least use for it, but the masses of the people, who would be closely affected, would be bewildered by its cumbrous, uncouth jargon.

Mr. James Stevenson, M.P., a manufacturer of chemicals for half a century, a few years since warmly protested that “this question has been argued too much as a trade question, a buying and selling question. It appears to me that it is a question of the English language. The units of weights and measures form part of our language, with which we express in words our mental conception of size and distance.

Professor De Morgan has recorded his opinion that “the nomenclature would be found exceedingly inconvenient and unintelligible. I, do not think,” he said, “you could easily drive into the common mind, in England, the idea of ascending, by Greek words, and descending by Latin words. The distinction between the decimetre and the decametre, the millimetre and the chiliametre, would scarcely be recognised. . . . . There would be