Weights and Measures

 

By Robert-Shore-Milnes Bouchette

 

[Originally published by the Literary and Historical Society of Quebec in Transactions, New Series, No. 1 (1862)]

 

The hundred-weight has been reduced, as in Canada, to 100 pounds, and the ton to 2000 pounds, but the old hundredweight of 112 pounds, and ton of 2240 pounds, seem still to be used under the designation of the long hundred weight and the long ton; but these it is presumed are merely permissive, the reduced weights being the standards.

 

With the few differences pointed out, resulting from comparatively recent legislation in both countries, the weights and measures of the United States are similar to, and it may be said identical with, those of England.

 

Both countries have the same mile, yard, foot, and inch, the same acre, the same pound avoirdupois, and pound Troy.

 

And although the measures of capacity have since 1826 been changed in England, the Winchester bushel and wine gallon, the standard measures of capacity in the United States, are mere copies of English prototypes.

 

We now come to the weights and measures as established by law in Canada. The leading statute upon this subject is an act of the Legislature of Lower Canada, the 39^th George III. Cap. 7, which is to be found in the Consolidated Statutes of Lower Canada, cap. 62. Under this, three sets of various kinds of beams and scales, and four sets of standard weights and measures were imported from England, and these were declared to be the standard weights and measures of the province.

 

The weights and measures thus imported, were all made of brass and consisted of:

 

1.－. Avoirdupois weights in sets as follows:

From one dram to four ounces, “1/4 ounce to 4 pounds and 4 lbs. To 56 lbs. The standard being respectively 4, 7, 14, 28, and 56 lbs.

 

2. — Troy weights, in sets. From 1/2 a grain to 1 ounce, "1/4 of an ounce to 64 ounces, and 7 lbs. to 28 lbs. in weights of 7, 14 and 28 lbs.

 

3. — Wine measures, in sets from 1 gill to 1 gallon.

 

4. — Winchester measures, in sets from 1 gill to 1 gallon.

 

5. — Winchester bushels and 1/2 bushels.

 

6. — Canada measures (old French measures) from a poisson, to a pot.

 

7. — The minot and 1/2 minot.

 

8. — "The English standard foot rule."

 

9. — "The Paris standard foot rule."

 

10. — The "English standard yard."

 

11.—The "English standard ell."

 

1. — The pound  avoirdupois "with its parts, multiples and proportions," was made the standard weight "for weighing all goods, wares, and merchandise, butcher's meat, flour, meal, bread, biscuit and other  commodities whatever, commonly sold by weight" ("gold, silver, coin, bullion, drugs  and precious stones only excepted.")

 

2. — The pound Troy was the standard for weighing gold, silver, bullion, drugs and precious stones, as above excepted, from the applications of the avoirdupois weight.

 

3. — The wine gallon was made the standard liquid measure of Lower Canada, for "wine, cider, beer and spirituous liquors of all kinds, treacle and molasses, and all other liquids commonly sold by gauge or measure of capacity."

 

4. — The Canada minot was the standard for measuring "all rents, payable in wheat or other grain, and also for measuring all grains or seeds, fruits or roots whatever, in cases in which no other special provision is made in any act, and likewise for lime, sand, ashes, or any other kind of commodity, usually sold by measure of capacity, where no special contract is made to the contrary."

 

5. — The English Winchester bushel[1] is made the standard for measuring salt, wheat, oats, peas, barley and other grains or seeds, in cases only when such articles have been specially sold or contracted for by such measure, and in cases in which no special, provision is made for the mode of sale in any other act.

 

6. — The Paris foot was applicable to the measurement of lands, or lots granted or sold by the arpent or foot, and also, to the measurement of all kinds of wood, timber and. stone, and "all manner of masons', carpenters', and joiners' work, or any other article or any other kind of work commonly measured by the foot or other measure of length, etc., where no special contract exists to the contrary."

 

7. — The English foot is applicable to the measure of lands granted by the British Crown, and also to the measure of wood, timber, etc., as above; provided a special contract has been made for that purpose.

 

8. — The English yard is made the standard for measuring all kinds of cloth or stuffs made of wool, flax, hemp, silk or cotton, or any mixture thereof, and all other kinds of goods, wares and merchandise commonly sold by measure of length.

 

9. — The English ell, "containing 3 feet 9 inches of the standard English foot" above mentioned, is declared to be the standard measure by which cloth or stuffs of wool, flax, &c. may be sold when specially sold or contracted for by that measure.

 

We thus find that the legal weights and measures of Lower Canada have been borrowed from the old English standards as they existed antecedently to 1825, with the addition of certain French measures of length and capacity, i. e. the Paris foot, the minot, and the pot, pinte, chopine and poisson. But the law is silent as to the cases in which the latter measures of capacity are to be applied, and we are left to believe that they are merely legalized as measures by which liquids may be sold in retail, although the declared standard measure of capacity for all liquids, is the wine gallon.

 

In Upper Canada the measures of length, weight and capacity are the same as in Lower Canada, being derived from the same source, except that no French measure whatever is recognized in the former.

 

Under the system just described, grains were uniformly sold by the Winchester bushel, or by the minot, as measures of capacity, the cwt. was 112 lbs. and the ton 2,240 lbs. More recent enactments have changed the law in these respects and by acts passed in 1859, to be found in the Consolidated Statutes of Canada, cap. 53, the following is declared to be the standard weights which in all cases shall be held to be equal to the Winchester bushel of grains and seed, viz:—

 

Wheat, peas, beans and clover seed...60 lbs.

Indian corn and rye.. 56 lbs.

Barley, timothy seed and buckwheat 48 lbs.

Oats… 34 lbs.

 

The acts in question do not, however, stop there. The 22nd Vict. chap. 21, prescribes the weight which shall be equal to the Winchester bushel of the following articles, yiz:—

 

Potatoes, turnips, carrots, parsnips,

 

beets and onions…… 60 lbs.

Flaxseed……50 lbs.

Hemp seed……44 lbs.

Blue grass seed…….14 lbs.

Castor beans……40 lbs.

Salt……56 lbs.

Dried apples……22 lbs.

Dried peaches……33 lbs.

Malt……36 lbs.

 

It may therefore be considered that, as a measure of capacity, the Winchester bushel and the minot are abolished, as standards, except in cases where the parties have specially agreed to buy and sell by measure instead of by weight.

 

By the same act the hundred-weight of 112 pounds, and the ton of 2240 pounds are abolished, and the hundred-weight is declared to be 100 pounds and the ton 2000 pounds avoirdupois, thus assimilating our hundred-weights and tons to those of our neighbors in the United States, and making one step towards the decimal system of computing weights.

 

With regard to the verification of the weights and measures of commerce, we find that at an early period of the legislation of Lower Canada, the law which authorized and directed the procuring of standards from England, provided for the annual inspection of weights and measures in the Province, and assigned that duty to certain public officers then known as Bevenue Inspectors and now designated by law as Collectors of Inland Bevenue.

 

At the period referred to, one of these officers resided in each of the municipal districts into which Lower Canada was divided—Quebec, Montreal, and Three Rivers,—and to each of these officers was entrusted one of the sets of standard weights and measures imported under the act; the 4th and remaining set being confided to the custody of the successive clerks of the Legislative Assembly, by whom they were carefully preserved until April 1849, when they were destroyed by the conflagration of the Parliament Buildings at Montreal, thus meeting with the same fate which had twice attended the standard weights and measures of England, deposited in the Exchequer at Westminster.

 

We are thus left without reliable standards to resort to for the comparison and adjustment of the standards themselves, which are now in use in the various districts of the Province, the accuracy of which may well be questioned, when it is considered that the original sets from which copies have been made, and which are still used for the verification of the weights and measures of commerce, have been in use for upwards of 60 years, thus placing us very much in the condition of some of the States of the American Union, in which, until the subject was taken up by Congress after the Report of 1821, the original standards in many instances had not been verified since the declaration of independence, and in some cases, as in Massachusetts, standard weights had been 100 years without comparison or verification to test their accuracy.

 

The necessity, therefore, of providing new sets of duly authenticated and reliable English standards, has become paramount, and there can be no doubt that so important a branch of the commercial economy of the Province, will receive the immediate and earnest attention of the government.

 

Having thus considered what are the recognized legal standards of weights and measures in France, in England, in the United States, and in Canada; we are naturally led to the consideration of the systems themselves, which have been shown to prevail in those countries—systems which, in the main, resolve themselves into two—that is to say, the French and the English systems, each of which has its advocates, and both of which are unquestionably possessed of great and distinct merits.

 

Theoretically, the French metrology is admitted to possess uniformity, symmetry, and simplicity, to perfection. Based as it is on a single fundamental unit, divided or multiplied decimally, and with a nomenclature essentially significant of the part or multiple of the thing meant, it cannot be denied that it has great claims upon the serious attention and consideration of civilized nations.

 

This excellence, however, of the French system, must be viewed in connection with the decimal currency of the country of which it forms a part, the franc being the standard unit of that currency, its subordinate divisions being decimes and centimes. It is therefore easy in practice to compute prices and keep accounts, when both the article sold and the money paid are governed by a common rule of decimal computation, the decimal system being avowedly best for counting or aggregation, although the binary is preferable for segregation or division.

 

We have seen that several of the continental powers of Europe have already adopted the French system, and the Committee of the House of Commons to which the subject was referred, reported last year in favor of the introduction and adoption of the metrical system in Great Britain.

 

The evidence given before that committee has thrown considerable light upon the respective merits and advantages of both the French and the English systems, and although the majority of the witnesses vouch for the superiority of the former and advocate its adoption, there will be found able and weighty arguments in favor of the maintenance of the English system, for which strong predilections naturally exist in a country so steadfastly attached to its own institutions.

 

It is easy to discover in the evidence of those who would maintain the existing weights and measures in England, the repugnance with which would be seen any radical change in the English system that would be borrowed from a foreign country, and especially perhaps from France, and it is somewhat curious to find that as early as 1791 the existence of that feeling was foreseen as likely to interfere with the extension of the French system to other nations. In the report of the French Commissioners, to be seen in the "Mémoires de l’Institut, Base du système métrique," we find the following apologetical language for having selected for admeasurement a meridian in France, and having had the operations carried on by scientific men of that country.

 

"Enfin nous avons choisi le seul méridien où l'on puisse trouver un arc aboutissant au niveau de la mer, coupé par le parallèle moyen (45°) sans être cependant " d'une trop grande étendue qui en rende la mesure actuelle trop difficile. Il ne se présente donc rien ici qui puisse donner le plus léger prétexte au reproche d'avoir voulu affecter une sor te de prééminence.

 

"En un mot si la mémoire des travaux venait à s'effacer, si les résultats seuls étaient conservés, ils n'offriraient rien qui pût servir à faire connaître quelle nation en a conçu l'idée, en a suivi l'exécution. Discours préléms.

 

Apart, however, from any national pride that would reject the adoption, by England, of the French metrical system and revive the cry nolumus leges Angliœ mutari, so famous in the days of Henry III it cannot he denied that there exist strong grounds for hesitating to subvert a system so closely interwoven with the habits and usages of a great commercial people, as that of the weights and measures that have had the sanction of ages.

 

There is no doubt that, taking a cosmopolitan view of the subject, it would be desirable, as ancillary to international commerce, that common standards of weights and measures should be recognized and adopted by all commercial countries, and it is not at all surprising that the International Statistical Congresses that met in London and in Paris, in connection with the World's Exhibitions in those two great capitals, should have advocated and recommended the metrical system which they considered as best calculated to attain that desideratum. The adoption of a common international standard would unquestionably facilitate the preparation of commercial statistics, and might possibly have a favorable influence upon the commercial intercourse of different countries; but I am inclined to think with Mr. Airy, the Astronomer Royal of England, that the advantage of adopting the French metrical system of weights and measures, on international grounds, " are not worth mentioning in  comparison with the difficulty of introducing it.”

 

The French decimal system, combining as it does weights, measures and money, presents certainly a harmonious whole, such as no other known system possesses. — As an invention it is unparalleled for its ingenuity; but it may well be questioned whether its inflexible decimalization, and its fundamental unit, are in perfect harmony with nature. The duodecimal system, with its four factors and its binary character, seems to offer itself most naturally to our adoption. Apart from the mere computation of numbers, to which decimalism is so peculiarly applicable, it is more allied to the nature of things than the decimal system. It is true man has ten digits, but he has eight fingers and two thumbs. His whole organization is based upon binary principles. His nerves are in pairs. His brain has two hemispheres and six lobes. His teeth are found in two rows of sixteen each. Our globe is divided into hemispheres equatorially or longitudinally. The quadrant is a natural division of the sphere. "We have four seasons, and the phases of the moon are computed by quarters. Nature, in fact, seems to delight in binary combinations, and if we descend to the ordinary operations of the mind in the every day pursuits of life, we find the same tendency to halve or double objects of measurement or of weight, as the readiest way of forming a clear conception of quantities.

 

Under this aspect the English system possesses, in my humble apprehension, advantages over the French, in the every day commerce of life. The French system is theoretically admirable; but it is perhaps too artificial to square with the instincts of man, that are so suggestive of binary divisions, and therefore favorable to a duodecimal system, which is practically more susceptible of them than the decimal.

 

But this great decimal system which aimed at universality, was repelled by the circle and found unsuitable to the divisions of the day.—Geography and time have retained in France, as elsewhere, their pristine modes of measurement and computation; and the language and calculations of  science have so far remained universal.

 

I have, in the foregoing remarks on weights and measures, abstained from the consideration of the kindred question of a decimal currency. 1st, Because that branch of the subject would be entitled to a fuller examination than could be given to it here; and secondly, because the decimal system of currency prevails in the United States and in Canada as well as in France, with this difference, that the unit in France is the franc, in this Province and in the United States it is the dollar.

 

Of the wisdom or necessity of subjecting weights and measures to the law of decimals, it has been shown that differences of opinion exist; but it seems to be universally admitted that the decimalization of the currency is everywhere desirable, from the facilities it affords in the computation of money, and the simplicity to which it reduces the keeping of accounts.

 

That a system of weights and measures, based upon binary and duodecimal principles, can harmoniously co-exist with a decimal currency, is amply shown by the experience of our neighbours, who, as a commercial people, are second in the magnitude of their commerce, but to Great Britain. With us, a decimal currency was legalized in 1852, (16 Vict. Cap. 158,) but it was, and continues to be, not compulsory but permissive, the denomination of money in pounds, shillings and pence being still admitted and recognized. By a subsequent act, however, 20 Vict. cap. 18, passed in 185T, it is directed that all the public accounts of the Province shall be kept in dollars and cents—the banks have universally adopted the change, and the decimal currency may be considered as generally established, although the practice still prevails in the retail trade of making up their accounts in the old currency of "£. s. d."

 

In England the important question of decimalizing the currency has not been overlooked. The commission appointed in 1841-2 to restore the standard measures destroyed in 1834, point out, in their report, the facility of establishing in England a decimal coinage. Their plan was to interpose a new coin of two shillings between the pound sterling or sovereign and the shilling, and of considering the farthing which is now the 1/960 part of the pound, as the 1/1000 of that unit. It proposed to establish a coin equal to the 4/400 part of a pound, and of circulating besides these principal members of a decimal coinage, other coins of value bearing a simple relation to them, including coins of the same value as the present shilling and the six pence.

It was as a part of the scheme thus proposed that the English florin was coined ; but the system, as a whole, was not adopted, and the new coin does not appear to have gone into very general circulation.

 

I feel that I have trespassed so long on your attention in the examination of a somewhat dry subject, that it would be abusing of your indulgence to protract this paper to any greater length. I would, however, before closing my remarks, throw out the suggestion, whether it would not he possible for nations to adopt two systems of weights and measures, the one of an international and universal character, which would be applicable to foreign commerce, the other suitable to the genius and habits of individual peoples, thus leaving undisturbed the weights and measures of domestic trade, the alterations of which offer every where such insuperable obstacles. International commercial standards might thus be established as contradistinguished from national ones, as the jus gentium or law of nations, is distinct from the jus civile or municipal law. The intelligence and enlightenment of the higher commercial classes in all countries would, it is believed, render such an object attainable, and obtain for commerce that universal language which, like the notation of music, the nomenclature of botany, and the terms of science, can be read and understood among all civilized nations.

 

I cannot more happily close this paper, in which I have dwelt upon the French and the English system of weights and measures, than by quoting from the concluding paragraph of Mr. Adams' report, the following eloquent and philosophical language :—

 

"Uniformity of weights and measures, permanent universal uniformity, adapted to the nature of things, to the physical organization, and to the moral improvement of man, would be a blessing of such transcendent magnitude, that, if there existed upon earth a combination of power and will, adequate to accomplish the result by the energy of a single act, the being who would exercise it, would be among the greatest of the benefactors of the human race. But this stage of human perfectibility is yet far remote. The glory of the first attempt belongs to France. France first surveyed the subject of weights and measures in all its extent and all its compass. France first beheld it as involving the interests, the comforts, and the morals of all nations and of all after ages. In forming lier system, she acted as the representative of the whole human race present and to come. She has established it by law within her own territories; and she has offered it as a benefaction to the acceptance of all other nations. That it is worthy of their acceptance is believed to be beyond a question. But opinion is the Queen of the world; and the final prevalence of this system beyond the boundaries of France's power, must await the time when the example of its benefits, long and practically enjoyed, shall acquire that ascendency over the opinions of other nations, which gives motion to the springs and. direction to the wheels of power."