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as, by 24th Geo. II., lint and hemp seeds are ordained to be soulby the Linlithgow barley measure ; and our Teind Court hare u-niformly modified victual stipends in the same measure.
It would certainly, however, be matter of no great difficultyto revive this 17th article, by a declaratory act. Nor would itbe matter of much difficulty to have the proportions of the ex-isting measures and weights of every county to the standards(declared legal by this article) ascertained by authority of theSheriff and Justices, acting with proper assistance, and stated pay-ments of existing measure determined in such a given denomi-nation of the legal, as should keep them equal to what they werebefore. Let the proportions of the legal, to the accustomedstandards, be then advertised, in the most public manner: Letprovision be made for the inhabitants of the county furnishingthemselves with these standards, and let a proper time be allow-ed for the inhabitants so to furnish themselves; and let it be de-clared, that, after the lapse of this period, the penalties of thelaw will be rigorously exacted from every person who shall use anyother weight or measure than the legal.
People are apt to disturb themselves by the anticipation of i-maginary embarrassment that would occur in the use pf newweights and measures, which they conceive themselves not tounderstand. Custom, which has reconciled us to the use of thosewith which w-e are acquainted, would, however, in the same man-ner, reconcile us equally to any new standard that might be ad-opted. In fact, all standards must at first have been arbitrari-ly assumed; and when we say we understand a weight or msa-sure, we can only mean that w-e know how many times it con-tains, or is contained, in the standard which we have assumed.As to the standard itself, we can do no more than point to thelump, or to the rod, w hich we have agreed to name a pound ofweight, or a yard of length; and any lump, or any rod, wouldhave served the purpose, just as well as any other. *
That slight of hand may be guarded against in measuring ofcorn, it were proper that the measuring vessel, made of cooper s
* The parts of the human body seem to have been universally referred to, #original standards of measure; such as the pes et ulna , the/bo?, and uln or eln.It is said, that Henry I. of England caused a rod to be made, of the preciselength of bis ulna or arm, (measuring, it is likely, to the breast bone), and thatthis was fixed as the standard of length, and so continues. In Scotland , W 'Chave referred to the breadth of the thumb, *vt the root of the nail, as an inch;and to the length of barley-corns, as component parts of an inch, &c. Theinconvenience of referring to natural objects, where the same denomination isapplied to all the variations to be found in individuals, must soon have indi-cated the necessity of adopting, as a standard of length, something made ofynaltcring materials, as a rod of iron or copper. After fixing a standard oflength, it was easy from this to determine length, breadth and depth, oral*measures of dimension. It would then be as easy to determine a standard otweight, by making a piece of gold, for instance, of certain dimensions, tb*pound.