2. The Northern System
Measures of Length
The Roman foot survived in North France as the quarter of the Aune or ell, a measure = 46·77 inches. (Cf. the passetto or double braccio of Tuscany, of 4 palmi = 45·96 inches.) As a cloth-measure the Aune was divided, like our cloth-yard and ell, into eighths and sixteenths.
But there was also the pied de roi, the royal foot, one-sixth of the Toise, which = 76·73 inches = 1·949 metre.
The royal foot, = 12·789 inches, was divided into inches (pouces) of 12 lines, each of 12 points. Its standard was traditionally referred to Charlemagne, either to the length of his foot, or to a standard brought to him by the envoys of Harūn-al-Rashid. It coincides with half a Hashími cubit, 25·56/2 = 12·78 inches. This tradition must be dismissed; new measures are not introduced as standards in that way. It was simply one-sixth of the toise, which was a Cano from civilised South France, but its standard was so ill-kept as to be of doubtful exactitude. All that is known of its standard is that, about 1668, an iron rod was fixed in a wall of the Grand Chatelet in Paris and that the length of this rod was that of half the breadth of the eastern gateway of the Louvre-palace, which gateway was, according to the plans, 12 feet in breadth. This standard was, however, considered to be 5/12 inch short of the customary toise.
The Louvre standard, taking it at = 1·965 metre (which I find it by actual measurement), corresponds closely to the Cano of Beaucaire. This town on the southern Rhone, opposite Tarascon, had a great annual fair, and may thus have given its linear standard to trade in the same way that Marseilles passed the Cargo of its Egyptian corn-trade on to Paris as the Setier, and that Troyes passed the marc used at its great annual fair on to Paris as the standard of the French troy pound.[[50]]
But the royal foot was inconveniently long for popular use, and a practice arose of taking 11 inches of it as a customary foot = 11·7 inches. This reduced foot, coinciding almost exactly with the quarter-Aune, was much used in the districts north of Paris as the pied de Ponthieu, or de Clermont. The Brasse was a short fathom of 5 pieds = 5 ft. 4 in., probably an adaptation of the Roman pace. A pas (pace), of half a brasse = 32 inches, is used in some districts for land-measurement.
Measures of Distance
There was no official measure of distance, such as our furlong and mile, between the toise and the league, and the league was very variable (see [Chapter III]). Acre-lengths, cordes, and other popular measures supplied the want, more or less well. In some districts (also in Mauritius) there were milestones at intervals of 1000 toises, called a mille. In South France the mille was divided into centenié of 100 toises or perhaps local cano. This was probably the length of the sesteirado, the rood, 100 × 4 cano.
The corde, a field-measure used before the surveyor’s chain, was of variable length. In Burgundy the league of 3000 toises was divided for roadwork into 50 portées, of 12 cordes; these would thus be 5 toises or 30 feet. But there seems also to have been a corde of 33 feet, perhaps reduced feet, and thus = 30 royal feet, and this, doubled, was used as the rough measure of a ‘cord’ of firewood = 4 × 4 feet, in 4-foot logs. This is the probable origin of our ‘cord-wood’ as applied to stacked logs for fuel.
Land-measures
The units are the square toise = 4·543 sq. yards, the perche and the arpent, with other units in local usage.
There were three different perches officially recognised, and still in common use.
1. Perche d’ordonnance or of the Eaux et Forêts administration, 22 royal feet = 23·466 English feet; the square perch of 484 sq. feet = 13·44 sq. toises = 2 sq. rods.
The approximate coincidence of the quarter-aune with the reduced royal foot, i.e. of 12 Roman inches with 11 royal inches, was the probable reason of the standard perch being fixed at 22 feet = 24 Roman feet or 6 aunes.
The standard arpent was 100 square perches = 1344 sq. toises = 200 rods or 1·26 acre.
2. Perche commune, 20 royal feet = 21·3 English feet, the square perch of 400 sq. feet = 11·11 sq. toises = 50·47 sq. yards.
The arpent commun was 100 of these square perches = 1111 sq. toises = 1·04 acre.
3. Perche de Paris, 18 royal feet = 19·83 English feet, the square perch of 324 sq. feet = 9 sq. toises = 40·9 sq. yards.
The arpent de Paris was 100 of these square perches = 900 sq. toises = 0·844 acre.
The arpent commun is that of Quebec.
The arpent de Paris is that of Mauritius.
The acre de Normandie varies according to its perch, but it is always 160 sq. perches, and if these be standard it is equal to 2 acres. But the usual unit is the vergée or rood, of 40 perches = 1/2 acre.
It has been seen that the Jersey vergée is 40 perches of 22 reduced English feet square, the foot being 11 inches. This is an adaptation of a very general Normandy perch, 22 feet of 11 French inches. It is = 0·44 acre.
Local French land-measures varied considerably, from different standards of perch, from different lengths taken for the foot of the perch. But the size of the unit, Journal, Estrée, &c., &c., is very generally = 1400 to 1600 square perches or roughly about 1-1/2 acre. These measures, so irrational to the Parisian, are dear to the peasant’s heart; he understands them, and as people do not buy land as they would apples or eggs, no one is deceived.
The Estrée or Seterée (Setier seed-land) might be divided into 12 Boisselées (small-bushel lands).
Weight
The royal pound, livre poids de marc, the double-marc of Troyes, was one of several pounds current in Northern France. It was, like the royal foot, ascribed to Charlemagne, but his standard of weight, as known by his silver pennies, nearly always much above 24 grains, 1/20 of some ounce heavier than that of the Troyes marc, was probably altered later on. The royal pound, = 5570 grains, was raised for commercial purposes (about 1350) to 16 ounces = 7554·1 grains, the ounce = 472·13 grains.
The weight of the 12-ounce pound coincides very closely with that of the Bosphoric miná, 100 drachmæ of 56·66 grains; this is perhaps the origin of the story that it was sent to Charlemagne by Harūn al Rashid. Its ounce is also approximately the Tripoli ukyé of 10 dirhems × 470-3/4 grains, and nearer still to 471 grains, the weight of 10 of the dirhems of which 8 made the Provençal ounce.
It is probable that the French pound was one of the lighter pounds of the variable Northern Troy series, all with an ounce of 10 dirhems of 48 grains more or less.
The ounce was divided into 8 gros, groats or drachms, of 3 deniers or dwt., each of 24 grains. So the livre was 16 × 24 × 24 = 9216 French grains. These were light grains, not the heavy grains, 20 × 24 to the ounce, of English and other mint-weights.
There was a Quintal of 100 livres = 107·7 lb.
The Tonne or tonneau was 2000 livres = 2154 lb.
Value
The French coinage-system, probably instituted by Charlemagne, was the same as ours. The original unit was the silver penny, estelin (sterling) or denier (L. denarius) of 24 French grains; 12 deniers made a sol or sou (L. solidus, shilling) and 20 sols made the livre or pound, originally a livre d’estelins, a 12-ounce pound of sterlings. But the silver coinage shrank and was debased, until, by the eighteenth century, the pound, livre or franc was a silver coin worth tenpence, the sol a copper halfpenny, and the denier had shrunk, even as copper, to so minute a size that its place was taken by the liard, a small copper coin of 3 deniers, a quarter-sou; even the double of 2 deniers had disappeared. Accounts were kept in livres and sols and deniers, our £ s. d., but at 1/25 the present value of our coin.
The écu of 3 livres, that is of 60 sous, was largely used; wages of farm-servants are often at the present day reckoned in écus. This was properly a petit-écu or half-crown, but the real écu of 6 livres was so little used that the smaller coin took its name. And, as our half-crown has the great convenience of being one-eighth of a sovereign, so the écu had that of being one-eighth of a louis, the gold piece of 24 livres. This was the value of the louis at par, for it varied as did that of the guinea when England was a silver-standard country.
Measures of Capacity
These measures, both the wine-series and the corn-series, were quite discordant and had no relation to the measures of length. That this was caused by an incoherent system of factors is shown by there being in each series a unit derived from the perfectly concordant measures of the South:
The wine-velte = 1·76 gallon, half of the Escandau.
The corn-setier = 34·32 gallons, the Marseilles Cargo.
The former, when increased in water-wheat ratio, is almost exactly 1/16 of the latter. So, had the former, increased in this ratio, been multiplied sexdecimally, concordance would have been preserved. But there was a customary Muid = 63-1/2 gallons, our hogshead, with its quarter, our kilderkin, the Quartaut = 15·8 gallons, and not to derange these measures the velte was made one-ninth of the Quartaut. And in the corn-series the Setier was divided and multiplied duodecimally. So the concordance was entirely deranged.
1. Wine-measures.—The Velte (the origin of which is given in [Chapter XIX]) was divided into 2 gallons (our wine-gallon), 4 pots (our pottle), 8 pintes. The last of these, = 1·76 pint, was about our old wine-quart, = 32 oz., its half was a chopine or setier, = our wine-pint, and the half of this was the demi-setier, a name still current, the French equivalent of our popular ‘half-pint.’
2. Corn-measures.—The standard unit was the Setier = 34·32 gallons, or 4·29 bushels, differing very slightly from the Marseilles Cargo = 4·34 bushels. As the Setier was an isolated measure, while the Cargo was from early medieval times the basis of the complete system of Southern measures, it may confidently be inferred that the Paris unit of corn-measure was taken from that of Marseilles, which was the Egyptian Rebekeh, the cubed Arabic cubit.
The term Setier is the L. sextuarius, but it had lost its original meaning and become a general-utility term in measures. The Setier = the Marseilles Cargo of 4 Sestié, must not be confused with this sestié. It was divided into 12 boisseaux of variable standard, but usually estimated to hold 20 French pounds of wheat. As 1/12 setier, the boisseau was = 2·86 gallons, and it was divided into 16 litrons = 1·43 pint.
There were intermediate divisions of the Setier; it was of 2 mines (a term taken from the Southern eimino), 4 minots, 12 boisseaux.
There was also a Muid for corn and salt. The corn-muid was 12 setiers.
There are still in France traces of an older system of corn-measures derived from the cubic foot. I found, in the Rouen Museum, the standard bushel of the town of Bolbec. It measures 16 inches diameter by 12·6 inches deep = 2533 cubic inches or 9·14 gallons. It appears to be the French cubic foot = 2091 cubic inches increased in water-wheat ratio to 2533 × 1·22 = 2551 cubic inches, a difference probably to be ascribed to the difficulty in measuring at all accurately.
There are also many local standards of capacity, well deserving of study. Some, as the bushel of La Rochelle, indeed of the west of France generally, = 56 lb. of wheat, are much larger than the Paris Bushel. There was a general rejection of the duodecimal division of the Setier.
Table of Old French Measures
| Length | Land | ||||
| Aune | = 46·77 | inches. | Square Toise | = 4·54 sq. yards. | |
| Toise | = 76·73 | „ | Square Perche | = 2 sq. rods. | |
| Pied | = 12·789 | „ | Arpent (× 100) | = 1·26 acre. | |
| Perche | = 23·446 | feet. | |||
| Wine-measure | Corn-measure | Bushels | ||||||||
| Muid | = | 63·5 | galls. | Muid | = | 51·6 | ||||
| 4 Quartaut | = | 15·8 | „ | 12 Setier | = | 34·32 | gall. | = | 4·29 | |
| 9 Velte | = | 1·76 | „ | 12 Boisseau | = | 2·86 | „ | |||
| 8 Pinte | = | 1·76 | pint. | 16 Litron | = | 1·43 | pint. | |||
| 2 Chopine | = | 0·88 | „ | |||||||
| Weights | ||||
| Quintal | = | 107·7 | lb. | |
| 100 | Livre | = | 7554 | grains. |
| 16 | Once | = | 472·1 | „ |
| 24 | Deniers (dwt.) | = | 3 to a ‘gros.’ | |
| 24 | Grains. | |||
Remarks on the French Measures of Capacity
The fault of the Paris system was that there was little or no concordance between the different series.
In length, 6 aunes approximately coincided with 22 feet or 3-2/3 toises.
The measures of length had no concordance with those of capacity, and in the latter, wine-measure and corn-measure had lost their original concordance when they were brought from the south. They lost it by two faults:
1. By making the quartaut of 9 veltes instead of 8;
2. By dividing the setier into 12 boisseaux instead of 8.
Had this octonary division been substituted, it would have been quite satisfactory, and concordance with the linear standard would have been obtained.
A quartaut of 8 veltes, 8 × 1·76 = 14·08 gallons, would have been in water-wheat ratio with the corn half-setier = 17·16 gallons:
14·08 × 1·22 = 17·17.
And the setier divided into 8 parts would have given a larger boisseau = 4·29 gallons (a peck) corresponding in water-wheat ratio to the double velte of 4 gallons and measuring approximately 1000 cubic pouces (983 exactly); its side, when of cubic form, being almost 10 pouces, and thus affording an easily applied linear measurement as a check on the variation of the boisseau. The standard of this measure was most variable from want of such a check. Really, as 1/12 Setier it should have been 655·4 cubic pouces, but it varied between 644 and 677, its reputed capacity being 640 cubic pouces.
It would have been easy to have fixed the new boisseau at 1000 cubic pouces, raising the variable standard of the Setier to 8000 cubic pouces = 34·9 gallons instead of its reputed standard = 34·32 gallons.
By these slight alterations perfect accordance with the southern measures would also have been obtained.
Leaving the measures of length and surface which were sufficiently concordant, the measures of capacity would have been:
| Wine-measure | Corn-measure | |||||||
| Muid | = | 56·32 | gallons. | Muid | = | 34·9 | bushels | |
| = | 4·36 | qrs. | ||||||
| 1/2 „ | = | 28·16 | „ | (8) Setier | = | 34·9 | gallons | |
| Quartaut | = | 14·08 | „ | = | 8000 | c.p. | ||
| (8) Boisseau | = | 4·36 | gallons | |||||
| (8) Velte | = | 1·76 | „ | = | 1000 | c.p. | ||
| (8) Pinte | = | 1·76 | pint. | 16 Litron | = | 2·18 | pint. | |
A water-wheat ratio of 1 : 1·24 would have been preserved between the two series, and their connection with linear measures through a cubic boisseau of 10 pouces each side (or a cylindrical one of 10 pouces diameter and 11·4 pouces in height) would have been most advantageous.
It may seem futile to make these proportions 120 years too late, but they may be useful in showing how unnecessary was the revolutionary plan of uprooting the old measures.
[47]. In Provençal, the principal idiom of the Occitanian language, nouns take no plural form; so pán, cáno, &c., do not change. The Provençal words in this chapter are pronounced—páng, cánn, saomádd, eymīnn, escandáo, panáo, cárrg, miyeyròl.
[48]. Escandau is to gauge, to sound depths, to standardise. This word is from the same root as ‘scandalise’ applied to moral tripping, and then to the use of the ‘stiliard,’ the lever-balance that trips with any inequality of weight.
[49]. The cosso is a wooden bowl, Sc. ‘luggie,’ used by shepherds. Our rod is in some districts a ‘lug.’
[50]. There were relations between Burgundy and England. The former was, up to the fall of its powerful dukes in the sixteenth century, a state enjoying prosperity and independence, while France was mostly in a condition of misery. It had, and retained till quite recently, its system of measures and weights, derived from the southern system at the time when Arles was the capital of the kingdom of Burgundy. It had two toises, one = 7-1/2 French feet, the other, for field measure, = 9-1/2 French feet. Now the first seems to have passed to England, for a time at least, for the Liber Albus, 1419, contains an order for the City of London:
‘The Toise of pavement to be 7-1/2 feet in length, and the foot of St. Paul in breadth.’
The English wool-weights, the wey, stone (12 French lb.) and clove, were current in Burgundy and in Southern France.
CHAPTER XXII
THE METRIC SYSTEM
The great diversity in the weights and measures used in different parts of France, and the discordance between the series of the official system, or want of system, were inconvenient, and tended to become more so with the increasing facilities of communication between the provinces. Unification was required, and was being studied at the time when the Revolution broke out.
The obvious plan was to make such alterations in the Paris system as were strictly necessary, keeping to the main standards of length and capacity, standards not irreconcilable, and to make it obligatory throughout France. As Napoleon said, ‘It was so simple that it could have been done in twenty-four hours, and adopted throughout France in less than a year.’
Amendments such as I have sketched in the [last chapter] would have answered the purpose sufficiently.
The ostensible plan of the new system of weights and measures was (May 8, 1790) ‘to create them anew on invariable bases, and to establish in commercial calculations the uniformity which Reason has vainly called for during so many centuries, and which must form a new bond between men.’
Even this scientific and fraternal plan, at first on the basis of a normal pendulum-length, 3/4 inch longer than the half-toise (as proposed by James Watt in 1783), might have been carried out so as to disturb the hereditary ideas and customs of the people as little as possible. But it was resolved to take a geodesical basis. This, taken afresh and not accurately, for the metre, was already at hand in a toise equal to the Olympic fathom, 1/1000 of the meridian mile. And in the report to the Convention, it was recognised that the most ancient people had measures derived from the terrestrial meridian.
More than two centuries before the Revolution an abbé (Mouton) had proposed a revival of the Olympic system, decimalised from the meridian mile down to a digit, 1/100 of the fathom.
Without this decimalisation, at least in the popular series of measures, there was a geodesic basis—for this was resolved as necessary—already at hand in the Olympic system, and the Olympic foot cubed would have given a unit of capacity and the Olympic talent one of weight, all the more suitable inasmuch as 1/1000 of it would have been an ounce = 453·6 grains, closely approximating to the Cologne ounce and therefore likely to be acceptable in other countries. But the real object was to make a clean sweep of the past; and the formation of a Republican system of measures was entrusted to mathematicians and other scientists who did not consider that a system convenient to them might be very inconvenient to unscientific people. The division of all measures must be on an obligatory decimal system convenient to mathematicians and most inconvenient to nearly everyone else.
The basis of the new system was a measure considered to be one ten-millionth of the quarter-meridian, of the distance from the equator to the pole. This unit was neither original in conception nor exact in measurement. When Aristotle divided the circumference of the globe into 400,000 stadia, instead of the 240,000 stadia of 1000 Olympic fathoms, his stadion, 1/100,000 of the quarter-meridian, was equal to 100 metres. But there was no practical advantage in it, and navigators continued to use the nautical mile of 10 Olympic stadia, as they do to this day.
At least Aristotle did not seek to upset all the weights and measures of the Macedonian empire; and his stadion disappeared.
It is doubtful if absolute exactness will ever be attained in the measurement of the surface of our globe, irregularly spherical in form and of very uneven surface; but there is no doubt that the ancient Chaldæans and Egyptians measured it sixty centuries ago quite as accurately as the astronomers of the first Republic; and the Olympic standard of the meridian mile, not the kilometre, is the unit used to this day by the navigators of France as by those of every other maritime nation.
Having determined with little exactitude the metric decimal fraction of the quarter-meridian, the astronomers and mathematicians of the Republic, les idéologues as Napoleon called them, proceeded to evolve from it the most inconvenient possible units of length, surface, capacity, and weight. All that could be said for these units is that they were exactly and decimally derived from the metre. The metre was unacceptable to the people, as no metric unit of length corresponds even approximately to the universal limb-units of fathom, cubit, foot, span, palm, finger or thumb-breadth. The different series admit only the factors, 1, 2, 5; so each decimal unit has a half (0·5) and a double, but no quarter or third. The prefixes—in Latin for divisions, deci, centi, milli; in Greek for multiples, deca, hecto, kilo, myria—give the only names allowed.
Length
The Metre, = 39·370113 inches, is divided into 10 decimetres, 100 centimetres, 1000 millimetres.
1 yard = 0·9144 metre; 1 foot = 0·3048 metre; 1 inch = 0·0254 metre, or 2·54 centimetres.
It is multiplied by 10 for the decametre, by 100 for the hectometre, by 1000 for the kilometre, by 10,000 for the myriametre. Practically the kilometre, = 0·621 mile or 1093·6 yards, is the only larger unit used; the other units are useless. And though it be interesting to know that the kilometre is approximately 1/10,000 of the quarter-meridian, it is a useless fact.
Surface
The square metre = 1·196 square yard. The lower units are little used. For land-measurement the square decametre, 10 × 10 metres, is called an Are; 100 ares = 100 × 100 metres, make a Hectare = 2·47 acres; and the square metre is a Centiare.
1 acre = 0·40468 hectare.
Solidity
The cubic metre = 35·315 cubic feet (nearly the volume of a ton of water = 35·84 cubic feet) contains 1000 cubic decimetres, each of 1000 cubic centimetres (= 61 cubic inches).
1 cubic foot = 0·028317 cubic metre.
The cubic centimetre is strictly speaking 1/1000 cubic decimetre, but as used in chemistry for fluid measure it is considered as 1/1000 of the litre, which is only approximately a cubic decimetre.
Capacity
The Litre was originally a cubic decimetre, but this definition has been abandoned. It is now defined as the volume of a kilogramme of pure water in air at 4 degrees Centigrade = 39·2° Fahrenheit.
At ordinary temperatures a litre of water weighs about 998·8 grammes or 0·9988 kilogramme (see Table at end of [Chap. X]).
The only minor unit practically used (and only in scientific work) is the millilitre, under the name of cubic centimetre, = 15·432 grains of water.
1 Litre = 2·204 lb. water, or 1·76 pint.
1 Pint = 0·568 litre; 1 gallon = 4·546 litres.
The principal larger unit is the Hectolitre = 22·04 gallons or 2·75 bushels. The Decalitre = 2·2 gallons.
1 Bushel = 36·37 litres; 1 Quarter 291 litres or nearly 3 hectolitres.
1 Bushel to the acre = 0·9 hectolitre to the hectare. (Deduct 1/10 on English.)
1 Hectolitre to the hectare = 1·11 bushel to the acre. (Add 1/10 to French.)
Weight
The original unit was the Gramme, defined as the weight of a cubic centimetre of water at 4° Centigrade = 15·432 grains. It is divided into 10 decigrammes, 100 centigrammes, 1000 milligrammes. Of its multiples the decagramme is useless; the hectogramme is merely the name inscribed on a 100-gramme weight; the kilogramme of 1000 grammes is used when its use cannot be avoided.
But the present legal unit is not the gramme but the kilogramme = 2·2046 lb. or 15,432 grains.[[51]]
Intended to be the weight of a cubic decimetre of water at 4° C. (as the gramme was that of a cubic centimetre), this definition has been abandoned as inexact; it is now, like our pound, the mass of a certain platinum standard, in a vacuum.[[52]]
Practically, the unit of weight in the ordinary transactions of life is the ‘half-kilo’ of 500 grammes, more usually known as a livre or pound, though the use of this word in trade is punishable.
The livre or half-kilo = 1·1 lb. or 7716 grains.
1 kilo = 2·2046 lb. or 15,432 grains.
100 kilos or Quintal metrique = 220·46 lb.
1000 kilos or Tonne 2204·6 lb. = 0·984 ton.
1 ton = 1016 kilos; 1 cwt. = 50·8 kilos; 1 lb. = 0·4536 kilo or 453·6 grammes.
1 ounce = 28·35 grammes; 1 grain = 6·48 centigrammes.
100 kilos of wheat = 3·53 bushels, at 62-1/2 lb.
100 litres (1 hectolitre) of wheat = 2·75 bushels.
7 fr. duty on 100 kilos wheat = 2 fr. a bushel or 12s. 4d. a quarter.
1 bushel = 36·4 litres.
Money
The monetary unit is the Franc, practically the same as the old livre, somewhat less. According to the original plan, the Republican franc was to be 10 grammes weight, so that the decimal harmony of the system should not be disturbed. But financial expediency required it to be of about the same weight as before, so 80 old livres were recoined as 81 francs at 5 grammes weight and 0·900 fineness. The franc was to be of 100 centimes instead of 20 sous of 4 liards.
The copper coins, changed to bronze in about 1854, are pieces of 10 and 5 centimes, the latter equivalent to the old sou, so that the franc is commonly called a 20-sou piece, and the other silver coins, nominally of 5, 2, and 1/2 franc, are called in the same way pièces de cent sous, quarante sous and dix sous. The centime is so rarely seen as to be practically non-existent, and the decimal system not allowing the half or quarter of the 5-centime piece or sou, great inconvenience is felt by the poor,[[53]] yet the symmetry of the system has been marred by the issue of nickel quarter-francs, of a size which makes them often undistinguishable from francs. But this is 25 centimes, while the half-sou would be written 2·5 centimes, marring the symmetry of the centime column in accounts—where practically it would never appear.
Since the adoption of a gold standard under the second Empire, the gold 20-franc piece is the standard of exchange, and of payments in trade. It weighs 6·451 grammes = 99·5635 grains; it is of 0·900 fineness (= 22-1/5 carats) and thus contains 86·6071 grains of pure gold. Its exchange value is usually 15s. 10-1/2d., our sovereign being equal to 25 francs 20 centimes.
The system of international currency has led to the French currency containing coins, both gold and silver, of strange devices, and the necessity of placards in shops showing figures of the numerous coins which should not be accepted. Considerable vigilance is necessary to avoid taking coins not current, or taking for francs the nickel five-sou pieces scarcely distinguishable from them except in a good light.
Temperature
The French thermometer, called Centigrade (the proper term would have been centesimal), is on Celsius’s scale, of 100 degrees between the freezing and boiling points of water, under the normal atmospheric pressure, which for France is 760 millimetres = 29·92 inches.
Metric Measures of Time
These are dropped, officially, at present; but they may be re-established, for they were the essential part of the Republican system. Ardent republicans constantly claim their re-establishment, and sound republican newspapers, dated according to the republican calendar, take care that this shall not be forgotten. Scientific journals demand the re-establishment of decimal time and decimal degrees; for even to sell eggs or handkerchiefs by the dozen is a sin, and ought to be made a crime, against the decimal system.
Republican zeal, unable to reform the solar system, had to content itself with reviving the ancient Egyptian year of twelve equal months followed by five extra days, to be called Jours Sansculottides, and with instituting a new era. The extra day of leap-years made a sixth sansculottide; these years were therefore sextile, and the period of four years ending with leap-year was to be called a Franciade.
In justice to the authors of the Metric system, it must be said that they were not responsible for the Republican calendar; this was the work of a separate Committee, to whom the Convention handed over the work carried out by the Weights and Measures Committee of the Académie des Sciences. On August 1, 1793, it thanked the W. and M. Committee for their work, on the 6th it closed all the Academies, and soon after sent the great chemist Lavoisier, the principal member of the Committee, to prison and ultimately to the scaffold. Among the small number of real republicans who ruled France from Paris, there was much less enthusiasm for the metric system, intended to sweep away the memory of the old customs of weights and measures, than for the calendar, the essential part of which was a new era and the sweeping away of past superstitions, whether Pagan or Christian. In both cases one can see the power of a very small but enthusiastic, well-organised and violent minority of Jacobins against the large, but unorganised and terrorised, majority of the French people. In both cases we see the truth of Guizot’s saying: ‘Blind aversion for the past is full of falsehood and of ignorance.’[[54]]
The decree instituting the complete Republican system began by these words, characteristic of the times:
The French era begins with the foundation of the Republic, which was on 22nd September 1792 of the vulgar era, the day when the sun arrived at the true autumnal equinox, entering the sign of the Balance, at 9h. 18m. 30s. a.m., Paris Observatory time.
Thus (it continued) the heavens marked the equality of days and nights at the same moment that civil and moral equality was proclaimed by the representatives of the French people as the sacred foundation of its new government.
The month was divided into three decades and the days of the decimal week were numbered from one to ten.
The saints whose names had been attached to the days were abolished. They were replaced by objects of republican veneration, animals, vegetables, minerals, tools, &c. Each Decadi was consecrated to an agricultural implement, the plough, the watering-pot, the pitchfork, &c.
Each Quintidi was consecrated to a useful animal, the horse, the ass, the pig, the trout, &c.
The eight other days of the decade were consecrated to plants, &c. It was difficult to find 288 useful plants, but by bringing in such as the nettle, the dandelion (under its vulgar French name), strange plants discovered in a herbal dictionary, together with the manure heap and a few useful minerals, the saints were entirely replaced. To popularise these substitutes for the ci-devant saints an appendix to the Decadaire or Annuaire (for the term Calendar was abolished as savouring of superstition) gave popular information, in the crudest terms, on the diseases for which the vegetables and herbs were recommended by the scientific advisers of the Republic.
To complete this system, the circles of the globe, and all other circles, were divided into 400 degrees, divided decimally. The day was divided into 10 hours, of 100 decimal minutes, each of 100 decimal seconds.
The republican division of the day was not generally put into practice except in official documents, probably because the Jacobin leaders found it personally inconvenient. Decreed as obligatory in Frimaire, an II, it was suspended in Germinal, an III, yet that it was extant, if not in force, up to 1800 is shown by a police-report of an occurrence on ‘21 Brumaire an VIII à 2 heures 10 minutes décimales,’ i.e. at 5 A.M.
The story of the means by which the unpopular republican measures were enforced has not yet been told. Some idea of it may be guessed from a remark of de Bonald (1817):
I believe that the same firmness, rigour, and lavish expenditure, used to establish, or rather to try and establish, uniformity of weights and measures, would have been sufficient to establish uniformity of religion.
If in a country which had experienced Louis XIV’s system for establishing uniformity of religion, this could be said of the means by which the republican weights and measures were enforced, it is evident that the new system met with anything but the welcome usually supposed.
But a man had arisen who delivered France, for a time at least, from the more objectionable parts of the republican measures, and the good he effected in this way had doubtless much to do with his popularity. From the time of his Consulate, at the end of 1799, the rigour of the system was gradually relaxed. His contempt for the mathematician-advisers of the Republic, whom he had found to be incapable in public business, was probably brought to a climax by the following event.
The ordnance survey-maps of France were on Cassini’s scale of 1/86,400, i.e. 1 line to 100 toises (which is the proportion of the second to the mean day). A new map having been made on the metric scale of 1/100,000, Napoleon soon found this out, and ordered the map to be restored to the old scale.
‘Je la veux sur l’échelle de Cassini, et je me moque des divisions décimales’ (letter to the Minister of War, 1809).
The republican calendar and era were used until the end of 1805, when Napoleon restored the Gregorian calendar and its era; thus 11 Nivose, an XIV, was the last day of the republican system.
But the republican idea of a new calendar and a new era is not dead; it has so little died out that a calendar and era devised by a French mathematician and sociologist in 1852 is now actually used, not only in France, but in England, and also in Brazil, by the followers of this reformer.[[55]]
[51]. This is a partial return to the original arrangement. The kilogramme was originally named the Grave, with its decigrave and centigrave. The tonne of 1000 kilogrammes was originally called a Bar, with its decibar and centibar. The gramme was a Gravet, with its decigravet and centigravet. Similarly the hectolitre was originally named the Decicade (1/10 of the Cade = 1000 litres) of 10 centicades. The litre was a Cadil.
[52]. In the latitude of Paris. If weighed at Marseilles it would be equal to about 1000·4 grammes; if in London to 999·75 grammes. It necessarily varies with latitude, as does the length of the pendulum beating seconds. But this variation does not impair its relative accuracy, as whatever it is weighed against is similarly affected.
[53]. Thus if bread is 25 centimes or 5 sous the kilo, a single pound or half-kilo of bread cannot be bought at this price.
[54]. It had been proposed in 1789 to divide France into equal departments or districts by rule and compass. Each district was to be half a degree square. It was only the refractoriness of the coast line that prevented this geographic homage to equality.
[55]. In this Positivist Calendar the saints of the old calendar and the agricultural produce of the revolutionary calendars are replaced by great men and women; typical great men, from Moses and Homer to Descartes and Bichat, giving their names to the 13 months, each of 28 days. There is an extra day at the end of the year, and two extra days in leap-year. This system has the advantage of the 7th, 14th, 21st and 28th of the month always falling on the same day of the week.
The Positivist era dates from 1789; and the followers of Auguste Comte, in England, France and elsewhere, thus date 1911 as the ‘year 123 of the Great Crisis.’
CHAPTER XXIII
HOW THE METRIC SYSTEM WORKS IN FRANCE
Napoleon, who had witnessed the rigorous measures of the Republican government to enforce its metric system, said of it:
It violently broke up the customs and habits of the people as might have been done by some Greek or Tartar tyrant who, with uplifted rod, wills to be obeyed in all his decrees, regulated by his prejudices or his interests, without any regard for those of the conqueror.... It was tormenting the people for trifles.[[56]]
But he was too wise to disturb trade again by any change in the material standards, however objectionable; he kept these, while abolishing the unpopular decimal series.
The decree of February 12, 1812, accordingly ordered that weights and measures, while being strictly in accordance with the existing standard units, should have ‘such fractions and multiples as were generally used in trade and were best suited to the needs of the people.’
A double-metre became the new Toise, divided, like the old toise, into 6 feet of 12 inches. The Aune was to be 1·2 metre.
The hectolitre and the litre were divided sexdecimally, one-fourth of the hectolitre becoming a double-Boisseau differing very slightly from the old measure of the same name.
The half-kilogramme became the Livre, divided into 16 ounces, these being divided into eighths. The Quintal was 100 livres, the millier 1000 livres, the tonneau 2000 livres.
With regard to money, the gold napoleon being 20 francs and the franc of 20 sous, divided into 4 liards or half-farthings, the system was convenient.
This practical though incomplete compromise was in force until 1837, when Louis-Philippe restored, on paper at least, the full republican system, except the measures of time. Yet the Napoleonic compromise held its ground, and indeed has lost little up to the present day, notwithstanding a more rigorous enforcement of the decimal system under the second Empire and the third Republic.
About 1859 began the propaganda of the metric system abroad. Holland and Belgium, on which it had been imposed when those countries were seized by France in 1792 and 1795, retained it after the peace of 1814-1815; at least the old systems had been destroyed, and it was deemed best to retain the new one, so in 1821 it was compulsory.
The new kingdom of Italy threw away the remains of its metric inheritance from ancient Rome when in 1859 it took the French system, partly perhaps from the apparent difficulty of co-ordinating the measures of the different states, but probably as part consideration for French help against Austria.
Portugal adopted it, on paper at least, in 1863.
The worst was when, in 1868, it was adopted by the North German Confederated States, and when in 1872 it was made compulsory.
It is said that the governing powers of Germany, anxious to unify the diverse systems of its component states, took the fatal step in consequence of English official assurances that the metric system would soon be imposed on the British empire. After this disastrous surrender to international science, the governments of other countries, large and small, civilised and semi-barbarous, were easily induced by skilful diplomacy to impose the French republican measures on their peoples, heedless of the fact that all the persuasion and pressure of the French government had failed to get its own people to use the system whenever it could be evaded.
Herbert Spencer says, of the progress of the metric system:
When fifty years after its nominal establishment in France the metric system was made compulsory, it was not because those who had to measure out commodities over the counter wished to use it, but because the government commanded them to do so, and when it was adopted in Germany under the Bismarckian regime we may be sure that the opinions of shop-keepers were not asked. Similarly elsewhere, its adoption has resulted from the official will and not from the popular will.
The gradual adoption of the metric system by countries of all degrees of civilisation from Germany and Italy to Venezuela or Haïti, has not been from any desire of the people of those countries for it, except an infinitely small minority of scientists who desire that the whole world should use the system found convenient in international scientific reports, and a somewhat larger proportion of enthusiasts with high and unpractical cosmopolitan ideals. Many also acquiesce from the same motive which induces people to buy a well-advertised and puffed article instead of one to which they had been accustomed and had found satisfactory. They undergo the contagion to which the crowd-mind is so subject. In England a few genuine enthusiasts, and many more who have caught the scientific and cosmopolitan craze, take to the metric system as they take to learning Esperanto, and so long as they have not to use the one in business or the other in conversation, their enthusiasm lasts, especially when it affords opportunities for showing themselves friends of science and progress. But when the contagion spreads so wide that it threatens to revolutionise the habits and customs of a nation and its whole manufactures and trade, the danger is most serious.
The favour which the metric system has found amongst a small proportion of English people is largely due to their ignorance of their own system, an ignorance very excusable when there exists no official statement of our system, or even of its standards. The people are left to the information afforded very badly in school-books and scarcely better in almanacks. So our system is left without defence against the attacks made on it by well-meaning persons who do not know it, and by the never-ceasing action of the French government.[[57]] It may therefore be interesting to see
How far the French have adopted the Metric System.
A century of official pressure, of state-education, and of police proceedings against any public selling, marking or crying of goods otherwise than in metric measures and coins, cannot be without some effect, especially in large towns, but even there, while accounts are kept and bills made according to the legal system, the people, as distinguished from the official classes, have never taken to it, and in the country it is nearly entirely ignored, out of official transactions, both in weight and measures and in money.
The sizes of baskets and flower-pots are in pouces; lamp-chimneys have their size marked on them in lignes. The size of printer’s type is in points, each 1/6 line or 1/72 of the old French inch; and the printer’s pocket-rule is divided on one side into centimetres but on the other into ‘Ciceros’ corresponding to the English ‘pica.’
Barometers for ship-use have their scale usually in pouces and lignes. The port barometer on the quay of the great naval port of Toulon, in front of the town-hall, is on this old scale. In 1909 I found the barometer of a new Transatlantique passenger steamer making her first voyage to be ‘selon Torricelly,’ with its scale in the old pouces, 28 = 29·87 English inches.
The sounding line of French ships is in brasses of 5 old French feet, the cable is of 120 brasses, the knot is, as with us, 1/120 of the nautical mile of 1852 metres; the kilometre being absolutely ignored.
In Southern France the lengths of boats, as at regattas, is stated in páns, taken at 1/4 metre.
Wine is sold wholesale by the queue, by the barrique, by the feuillette. A barrique or piece of Bordeaux wine is 228 litres, of Burgundy 212 litres. Trade-units are as common in France as in England.
The housewife continues to ask for a four-pound loaf, a pain de quatre livres, for a livre of sugar, for a demi-livre of coffee, for un quart of chicory, for a demi-quart or for une once of pepper. In the market-place, in the streets fruit is openly cried at quatre sous la livre! or deux sous le quart! when no policeman is within hearing, and the police are discreetly deaf, even in Paris, except when ordered to be more vigilant; but then they kindly give a hint to the costermongers and street-traders and, after a few days of conformity to the law, the cries go on as before.
The grocer does not ticket his wares by the kilo, rarely even by the demi-kilo; he wisely tickets them with a simple 50, or 75, or 80, which means 5d., 7-1/2d., 8d., in coin, 10, 15, 16 sous, for a weight which is not mentioned but is understood to be une livre, and which can be halved and quartered down to an ounce. He finds that his customers are thus better pleased than if the ticket had ‘1/2 kilo’ marked on it, and he knows that they would be repelled if the price was by the kilo. About the only exception is when the price of goods cannot be expressed in centimes; thus if potatoes are less than, say, 2 sous a pound, the greengrocer has to ticket them ‘15 le kilo,’ 2 pounds for 3 sous. The practical non-existence of the centime, and the refusal of government to coin half-sous or farthings of 2-1/2 centimes, obliges him thus exceptionally to use the word ‘kilo.’
When a quart, a quarter-lb., say of coffee, is asked for, the grocer has to put into the scale three weights, of 100, 20 and 5 grammes, for a demi-livre two weights of 200 and 50 grammes, instead of being able to use a single half- or quarter-pound weight as under the Napoleonic compromise. For an ounce he gives 30 grammes.
In country towns goods are often openly ticketed in sous; I have even seen ‘six liards,’ six half-farthings, two for three-halfpence, as the marked price. In the South books and newspapers sometimes have the price boldly printed in sous, ‘20 sous,’ &c. In large shops, especially where there is a cash-desk, the salesmen have trained themselves to speak only of francs and centimes, but the smaller shopkeepers, even in Paris, usually say their prices in sous, at least for prices under two or three francs.
The peasant bargains for cattle in écus (half-crowns) or in pistoles of 10 francs; wages of farm labourers are still often in écus. Land is reckoned in the old measures according to local custom, and tables of these measures, with their metric equivalents, are given in the ‘Usages Locaux’ published for the use of juges de paix and other officials. Farms to let and land for sale are frequently advertised in these local measures. If the extent is given in hectares, the local equivalent in vergées, seterées, &c., is added. I have such advertisements of recent date.
The master of a government school in Normandy advertised the sale of his haystack by auction. The advertisement (in a newspaper of 1906, now before me) gave the weight of the hay as ‘5000 kilos (10,000 livres).’ He knew that the fathers of his pupils understood, as well as he did, a kilo to be 2 pounds, but he also knew that they would be much readier to bid if the weight was stated in pounds.
Market-prices of agricultural produce are frequently stated by newspapers in the old measures; that of apples is constantly recorded by the barattée, literally the churnful, about equal to our bushel.
The old agrarian measures are used quite close to Paris. I ask a farmer, not six miles from Paris, how much land he has, and he, knowing me to be ‘safe,’ says so many estrées. How much is an estrée? 1600 square toises is his answer.
I take up a Paris daily paper and see several advertisements of mushroom farms for sale, in the old quarries near Paris; the area of these is always given in toises.
Direct inquiries will always be answered most favourably to the metric system. The peasant’s caution will rarely let the inquirer detect his love of the old weights and measures, quite convenient to him. And the bourgeois, proud of his superior education and glorying in the triumphs of the metric system abroad, ignores the existence of any but the legal system; he is blind and deaf to the constant evidence which strikes the unprejudiced observer.
The doctor and the druggist would indignantly deny using any other than metric measures, but they have their professional units, necessarily on a gramme basis, though in figures corresponding to ounces, tablespoons, drachms, scruples and grains; drops (which are actually dropped, not measured) are prescribed, and the mixture is always made up to a total of so many ounces of 30 grammes. And the pharmacien, who is able to read through the frequent ambiguities of prescriptions written in grammes, centigrammes, &c., very likely to be confused, puts the mixture up in bottles which are moulded to show tablespoons of 15 grammes, that is half-ounces.
The druggists’ price lists give quantities in units of 30, 125, 250, 500 grammes or cubic centimetres, that is in quantities of 1, 4, 8, 16 ounces; and these are the quantities in which he usually sells drugs to his customers.
Thus in France there is a chronic struggle between the law and the people; the system of weights and measures was devised there, not for the convenience of the people, but to suit a decimal theory dear to the mathematical and bureaucratic mind; the people must make their convenience fit the system, and it is only by evasions and subterfuges that it can be made to fit, even approximately. The trader has to evade the law if he wishes to retain his customers. The manufacturer, not keeping an open shop, finds evasion easier, and all the circulars addressed by the government to Chambers of Commerce begging them to support the metric system remain without effect. A few months ago a circular deplored the practice of selling and buying silkworms’ eggs by the ounce. Recently a circular forbade professors and schoolmasters to utter the names of the old weights, measures or coins, or to allow their pupils to utter them.
The instances I have given of the failure of all the efforts to make the French people take to the metric system are entirely from my personal observation. I conclude them with an extract from Messrs. Halsey and Dale’s ‘The Metric Fallacy’ (New York, 1904) on the failure to convert manufacturers to the system:
The reasons for the failure of this colossal effort of a century to change the textile weights and measures of France is not difficult to find. The ideas of length, area, volume and weight are as firmly grounded as any that find a lodging in the mind of man. They are bound to the records of the past, to the work of the present, and to the plans for the future. They are ineffaceably imprinted upon the mind of every child to regulate his ideas of extension and weight as long as life may last.
These natural conditions are alone sufficient to account for the failure of the metric system in France. Other influences have however served to make the failure more complete in the textile industry. The metric system needed something more than the transcendent mathematical faculties of its designers to make it suitable for textile measurements.
The eminent scientists who designed that system were able to solve the most difficult problems in higher mathematics, but failed to comprehend what system of weights and measures was best suited for the carder, spinner, weaver and finisher of wool, cotton, linen and silk. The glamor of their fame failed to make the centimetre suitable for counting ‘picks.’ Their system had to stand or fall on its merits, and falling has proved that the highest of mathematical abilities is not inconsistent with a dense ignorance of the practical affairs of every-day life.
I strongly recommend Messrs. Halsey and Dale’s book to those who wish to know the opinion of American engineers and manufacturers on the metric system.
[56]. The full French text of Napoleon’s opinion is given in Against the Metric System, by Herbert Spencer (Williams and Norgate, price 3d.).
[57]. Aided greatly by the Alliance Française, an association formed, under government patronage, ‘to extend the political and moral power of France ... and make pacific conquests abroad by its superior civilisation.’ Every member of it abroad is bound to promote this cause.
CHAPTER XXIV
THE CONFLICT OF THE IMPERIAL AND METRIC
SYSTEMS
Two systems are face to face throughout the West—the Imperial system resting on long custom and on convenience, and the Metric system on an assumption of science and on revolt against the past. It has been shown that the system which pretends to be the only scientific one, and the easiest, is a failure even in France; but there, like the republic which gave it birth, it is, under the influence of patriotism or national pride, strong for attack abroad while in a state of anarchy at home, worrying manufacturers and evaded in trade whenever police-force fails to have jurisdiction or deems it prudent not to prosecute.
The one makes men fit the measures however inconvenient; the other makes measures to fit those who have to use them. The one attacks; the other apposes a passive resistance.
Let us take a general view of the system attacked.