MEASURE, in a legal, commercial, and popular sense, denotes a certain quantity or proportion of anything bought, sold. valued, or the like. It denotes also a vessel of capacity employed in measuring grain and other articles: the fiairth part of it peek. The regnlation of weights and measures ought certainly to be the same the kingdom, and therefore be reducible to sonic fixed rule or standard ; the prerogative of so fixing it was vested, by our ancient. law, in the crown. This standard was originally kept at NVinehes ter ; and we find, in the laws of king Edgar, cap. 8, near a century before the Conquest, an injimetion, that the one measure, which was kept at Winchester, should be observed throughout the realm. With respect to measures of length, our ancient historians (Wil. Mahn. in Vita. Hen. I. Spolm. Hen. Loped firilkins, 299) into run us, that a new standard of longitudinal measure was ascertained by king i lenry I., who commanded that the ulna, or ancient ell, which answers to the modern yard, should be made of the exact length of his own arm ; and one standard of measures of length once gained, all others are easily derived from hence : those of greater length by multiplying ; those of less by subdividing the original standard. Thus, by the statute called " Compo sitio ulnarem et perticarum," 51 yards make a perch ; and the yard is subdivided into 3 feet, and each foot into 12 inches, which inches will be each of the length of 3 grains of barley. The standard of weights was originally taken from corns of wheat, whence the lowest denomination of weights which we have still expressed by a " grain," 32 of which are directed by the statute called " Compositio mensurarum," to compose a pennyweight, of which •0 make an ounce, 12 ounces a pound, and so upwards. Upon these principles the standards were first made, which, being originally so fixed by the crown, their subsequent regulations have been gene rally made by the king in parliament. Thus. under king Richard I., in his parliament holden at Westminster, A. D. 1197, it was ordained that there should he only one weight and one measure throughout the kingdom, and that the custody of the assize, or standard of weights and measures, should be committed to certain persons in every city and borough. in king John's time, this ordinance of king
Hichard was frequently dispensed with for money Moved. A.D. 1201), which occasioned a provision to be made for enforcing it, in the great charters of king John and his son. —Slat. 9. Hen. III. c. 25.
The statute of Magna Charta, cap. 25, ordains that there shall be but one measure throughout England, according to the standard in the Exchequer, which standard was formerly kept in the king's palace; and in all cities, market-towns, and villages, it was kept in the churches. (4 Inst. 273.) By 16 Car. I. cap. 19, there is to be one weight and measure, and one yard, according to the king's standard ; and whoever shall keep any other weight or measure, whereby anything is bought or sold, shall forfeit for every offence five shillings; and by 22 Car. 11. cap. 8, water measure (viz., five pecks to the bushel), as to corn, or grain, or salt, is declared to be within the statute 16 Car. I. ; and if any sell grain, or salt, &c., by any other bushel or measure than what is agreeable to the standard in the Exchequer, commonly called Winches ter measure, he shall fiirfeit 40s. (22 Car. Ii. c. 8. 22 and 23 Car. II. c. 12.) Notwithstanding these statutes, in many places and counties there were, till within the last few years, many different measures of corn and grain. and also of length and solidity. Great inconvenience being felt in consequence, the government at length interfered, and introduced a bill into parliament for the establishment of a uniform system throughout the country.
This system, called the Imperial, came into operation on the 1st May, 1825,ou w Ilia day a total alteration took place In the weights and measures hitherto used in Great Britain. The principles upon which this alteration was founded we shall now proceed briefly to describe.