Page:British Weights and Measures - Superior to the Metric, by James W. Evans.djvu/41

Rh As to the exporters, their reasonable requirements are also met. Beeton’s Law Book (fourth edition) succinctly sets out how matters now stand in the mother country. It states:—“No purchaser is bound to accept goods by weight or measure other than those of the Imperial standard, but bargains entered into upon the basis of the weights or measures of the metric system are valid, according to a fixed scale of equivalent Imperial weights and measures. . . . . Goods for delivery in a foreign country, or imported from thence, may be made up, sold, or bought (so far as the export or import between the two countries is concerned) by any standard of weight or measure, at the option of the parties.” With this, however, they are not satisﬁed. Few in numbers compared with the sum total of all those engaged in trade, they seek to attach to themselves an advantage which could only be conceded at the expense and convenience of the many.

Those who have read much upon the question cannot but have been struck by the herculean efforts of the Decimal Association to obtain from British consuls in various countries expressions of opinion that the interests of British trade abroad would be beneﬁted by the adoption of the metric system. The device, after all, was somewhat puerile. It is easy to imagine the British Consul, say at Lyons or Bordeaux, asking a trader doing business with England whether he thought it would be expedient for us to adopt the metric scheme. Of course the local man would reply that it would be an advantage, a great convenience to have the same system in both countries; and he might add, “Oh I cannot understand your measures—they are so difficult.” All this would be duly reported, and, just as might have been