Page:Origin of metallic currency and weight standards.djvu/281

 Such scientific adjustments take place in all countries with the advance of civilization and commerce, and above all under the influence of a strong central government. Let us reflect how long it has taken for the English Statute Acre to conquer the local ancient acres in use in various parts of the United Kingdom, such as the Irish, the Scotch or the Winchester acre. In like fashion, although the standards of weight and capacity were regulated by Act of Parliament in 1824, local usage still held on, and units of weight unknown to the Statute still survive in the usage of provincial places. Now it is not unreasonable to suppose that the name royal or king's weight was given to the Babylonian commercial system, which was constructed on purely sexagesimal lines, because it was enforced by royal proclamation and power throughout the whole of the empire, and that in like manner the royal cubit mentioned by Herodotus ( 178) owes its origin to the establishment of one uniform standard for the dominions of the Great King. In fact no better illustration of what took place can be found than that afforded by our own terms such as imperial pint, or imperial gallon, or in a less degree by the statute acre, as contrasted with the older customary pints, or gallons, or acres. The mistake made by metrologists, in regarding the scientifically constructed Babylonian system as the first beginning of the art of weighing, is just as great as if a person writing a manual of English Metrology were to start with the metric legislation of 1824 as the first beginning of our metrology, and were to try and explain all traces of an earlier system or systems by forcing the facts into some sort of conformity with our modern standards. Undoubtedly in such an effort great facility would be found inasmuch as the present scientific standards are simply the ancient units of the realm accurately defined. But the reader will best understand the relations which probably existed between the Babylonian royal standard (both single and double) by having a short account of the adjustment of our standards laid before him. Great inconvenience having been felt in the United Kingdom for a long time from the want of uniformity in the system of weights and measures, which were in use in different parts of it, an Act of Parliament was passed