There is something curious about the history of the osperiment [GALLON] mentioned by Ward, who was an eye-witness, and wrote just after the statute of Anne, when his account could do no harm. The gallon was found to be 224 (Wollaston afterwards found it to be 224.4) cubic inches, that is, the sealed gallon at Guildhall : but, "for several reasons, it was at that time thought convenient to continue the former supposed content of 231 cubic inches." This means, as explained by the Committee of 1758, that the Lords of the Treasury direct an authority to be drawn for gauging according to the Guildhall gallon ; the merchants immediately petition to be allowed to sell as they were gauged ; the commissioners of customs do not follow the order (which however it does not appear was ever signed); and when the Lords of the Treasury take the attorney-general's opinion upon it, they are recommended to make no change : " For if the usage of gauging is departed from, he knows not where we shall be, because resort cannot be had to the Exchequer for a standard to which almost all the statutes refer ; for there is none there but what the king will be vastly a loser by." The old division of the gallon into that of wine measure, ale and beer measure, and dry t measure, was not only unknown to the law, but even to the writers on arithmetic, till the beginning of the 17th century. Nor when Briggs, Oughtred, &c. measured the gallons, did they divide them into more than two kinds—for ale and wine. Oughtred, who measured pecks, bushels, &c., and thence found 272i cubic inches for the deduced gallon, imagines this to be the ale gallon. It was undoubtedly the old Winchester gallon, before its content was a little reduced by the statute of 1697; this gallon still continued in use in Ireland ,up to the introduction of the imperial measures; and even in England, as late as 1727, Arbuthnot takes it for the existing dry measure. Perhaps we have the first time in which, and the first person by whom, the distinction of the corn and ale gallon was made, in the following citation from Wyberd (` Tacternetria ' 1650, p. 266): —"Now as to Mr. Oughtred's ale gallon of 272,1 inches, the said Mr. Reynolds " (John Reynolds, a clerk in the Mint, often referred to by Wyberd as a mathematician and experimenter)" indeed alloweth of such a Gallon measure, but not for any liquid thing, but for drie things, as Come, Coal., Salt, and other dry things measurable by this kind of Measure, and so calleth it the drie Gallon measure : and there upon he wil have to be 3 severall Gallons (or other like Measures), one for II Ines (which also serveth for ales, strong-waters, and the like), another for Ale and Beer, and n third for Come, Coates, and the like." Wyberd, rejecting the distinction of the dry and ale gallons, made his wine and ale gallons to be 224 and 266 cubic inches, by a series of carefully conducted experiments : it is singular that a good experi menter, with access to existing standards, and as good an experimenter to suggest something like the actual truth, should not have been able to find out the mere existence of the largest or ale gallon, and it shows the extreme confusion in which the subject was then enveloped.
There has been in various quarters a disposition to suppose that the varieties of gallons arose from the varieties of pounds, since the original definition of the gallon depended upon the pound. This we think exceedingly likely : we do not imagine that it was done of set pur pose, but only by confounding one species of pound with the other, in the way of common mistake. There is among most antiquarians a perverse unwillingness to admit human frailty among the explanations of the phenomena of former times, which has caused many an hour to be thrown away in trying to reconcile the Greek musical scales [TETRA mom)), and many more in finding out for the rude forefathers of all kinds of nations an accurate and self-consistent system of weights and measures. Though even in our day, a learned body,* legislating for educated men, after declaring in one paragraph that none but troy weight is to be used, has introduced averdupois weight in the very next paragraph,—we never permit ourselves to suppose that such a thing could have taken place in the reign of Henry VIII. or Elizabeth. Now it certainly does happen that there is a close relation not only between the old gallons and the weights, but even between the different versions of the old gallons and the weights. There was a gallon of 282 cubic inches, in the Exchequer as a standard ; there was one of 272i inches, in common use; there was one of 231 inches, in common use ; and there was one of 224 inches, in the Guildhall. Now 282 and 232
are, as near as integers will show it, in the proportion of the pound averdupois to the pound troy, and 272i and 224 are as nearly in the same proportion. It is unlikely that this should have been accidental.
Common usage, in the 16th century, made more distinctions of measures than have lasted. The editor of the Pathway of Knowledge' gives four sorts of pounds as in use : the Tower pound (already men tioned in the troy and " haberdepoys," the subtill, and the foyle. The word aubtill was not the one mentioned in TARE, at least one would suppose so ; let the reader try to understand it himself : " The poundes subtill, so tearmed for that in in small quantitie it may bee made ratable to represent anye other greater waight whatsoever, as foure penny weight troy, or less to answere in due proportion unto the wLole pound Troye, with all his parts, every parte sens,ible and seve rally to be handled. This waight is private, to assays 'Misters and such as can make triall of minerals, and not knowne to many other, neither is there any use thereof, in ordinarie accompts." This seems to mean that any small piece, such as an assayer would cut off for trial, was made to represent a pound, and the fineness expressed in ounces of that small pound would of course represent that of the actual pound. The pound foyle was less than the pound troy by its fifth part, and was used for gold foil and for wire, and for pearls. In the two former cases it obviously means that the workman paid himself for labour and loss by selling four-fifths of a pound of wire or foil at the price of a pound of bullion. And many varieties of measure arise in this way, namely, by varying, not the price of a given amount, but the amount of a given name at a given price. A wholesale bookseller now says that he sells 25 as 24, meaning that he who buys two dozen shall have one more ; hut in the 16th century, had this usage existed, it would have been put down that two dozen of books are twenty-five.
It is needless to give an account of the old standards of weight mentioned by the committee of 1758, as many of them are lost ; a much greater agreement was found to exist between those made at various times than was observed in regard to the standards of capacity. The origin and history of the different weights is alluded to in AVER DUPOIS and TROT ; of the standards of length in WEIGHTS AND MEASURES, STANDARD, in which last article will be found an account of the transition to the now established imperial measures. The day is probably distant when the English public shall enjoy the advantages of a uniform decimal system of weights and measures—the only one which is sure of stability. An opinion is gaining ground that the best method of ultimately attaining this end is by beginning with the coinage, and this was recommended by the commissioners who reported on the sub ject. [WEIODTS AND MEASURES, STANDARD.) Nothing, as it fortu nately happens, can be easier than this change : the introduction of coins of two shillings each, in place of the half-crown, might be followed by that of coins of twopence-halfpenny each, without requiring any alter ation in the habits or calculations of any one. It is the advantage of this proposition that the two new coins might be learnt as parts of the old system, before the subsequent alteration of the copper is made. As soon as these coins are well established, an alteration of four per cent. in the copper coinage, or the enactment that twelrepence-halfpenny shall pass for the silver shilling, is the whole step requisite to complete the process; and the pound will then consist of ten two-shilling coins (under their pro per name), the two-shilling coin of ten twopence-halfpenny coins(also under their proper name), and the twopence-halfpenny of ten farthings as at present. As soon as this change is made, and the convenience of its arithmetic found by experience, it will not be long before there is a demand for the extension of the principle to weights and measures. And it would bo well if those who endeavour to bring about a reform in this matter would remember that change of coinage is the only change which a government can immediately command—that for one calculation which is made upon goods, hundreds are made upon money —and that, if the small alteration which is required to make the coinage * purely decimal cannot be attained, there is little chance of the more extensive changes which the weights and measures will require.