“Una fides, pondus, mensura, moneta sit una, Et status illæsus totius orbis erit.”—BUDEUS.
“One faith, one weight, one measure and one coin, Would soon the jarring world in friendship join.”
The confusion of Babel is felt most severely in the matter of weights and measures. Whether we consider the _number of names_ of weights and measures, the _similarity_ of names, the _discrepancy in amount_ between those of the same name, or the _irregular relations_ of those of the same denomination, we find a maze, the intricacies of which we cannot retain in our memory an hour after we have committed them to it. Sometimes, too, we find a farther discrepancy of a surprising nature; as if the authorised pint should not be the exact eighth of the authorised gallon, and so there should be two different quarts, one of two exact pints, and one of a fourth of a gallon, as well as a false gallon of eight exact pints, and a false pint of an eighth of an exact gallon.
[9] Universal Dictionary of Weights and Measures. By J. H. ALEXANDER. Baltimore. W. Menefie & Co. 158 pp. 8vo.
We cannot here trace the genealogy of this multitude; Chaos and old night are the ancestors of them all, except those now prevailing in France. A large number of them are of vegetable origin, from grains of wheat, carob beans, carat seeds, &c. The Accino, the Akey, and innumerable others seem to have had a similar origin. Most measures of length have been derived from the human form, as foot, span, fathom, nail, &c. To originate a new measure or weight has proved much easier than to preserve their uniformity when established. Here legislation has been resorted to. The arm of Henry I. was measured, and a _yard_ of the same length was deposited in the exchequer as a standard. “Thirty-two (afterwards twenty-four) grains of well dried wheat from the middle of a good ear” were to weigh a penny, twenty pence one ounce, and twelve ounces a pound. Science finally carried the matter one step further, and a yard is now 36/39.13929 part of the length of “a pendulum that { 136} in a vacuum and at the level of mid-tide, under the latitude of London, shall vibrate seconds of mean time.” The metre, a measure established by science, is 1/10,000,000 part of the distance from the equator to the north pole. Measures of capacity have been still more difficult to verify, and weights, when depending upon these last, have been involved in further difficulties.—William the Conquerer, enacted that 8 pounds good wheat, 61,440 grains, make a gallon. In England now, 10 pounds of water, 70,000 grains, at 60° Fahr., make a gallon. In France a cubic decimetre of water, at maximum density, 39.2° Fahr., weighs a kilogramme.