What will be the result of the conflict between the two systems prevailing about equally in the greater part of the Western world? On the one side North America, the United Kingdom and its colonies in the Eastern Hemisphere; on the other side the Latin nations of both hemispheres with the principal Teutonic nations whose governments have imposed the French system on them. Russia and several other countries are awaiting the results of the conflict. But it is a siege rather than a conflict, for the attack is entirely from France; and though it has the inherent weakness of its system being a failure in the country of its origin, yet the defence has the weakness of its people being so badly instructed in their system that they cannot repel the invasion, and have even allowed the enemy to take up a legal position in their own country. The colonial policy of England, the simple plan of respecting custom, of not interfering needlessly, is very different from that of France. British colonies that were French or Dutch keep the laws and customs that we found there, and amongst these their systems of weights and measures. If these were convenient they remained, trade bringing a gradual adoption of the English system mixed with local measures; and as these were on a system more or less common to all the Western nations before the French Revolution, weights and measures gradually harmonised. But the policy of France is distinctly aggressive; its colonies must have French laws and the metric system, and other countries also must be induced to abolish their systems and replace them by the system which a century of police-action has not succeeded in making the French people adopt, and which they evade in every possible way.
Why the propaganda of the metric system should have had any success in England appears a mystery—yet it is intelligible to anyone who has observed the contagion of opinions, even the wildest. England has been fascinated by its presentation as scientific and international. This is a scientific age, and every new thing that can be puffed as ‘scientific’ is likely to take with people unprepared to criticise the science. I have seen the council of no mean English city induced by the word ‘scientific’ to vote in favour of a petition to make the use of the metric system compulsory; the few members, not one-tenth of the whole, who dared to oppose the resolution being called unscientific, unprogressive, &c.