Report upon weights and measures / By John Quincy Adams, Secretary of State of the United States. Prepared in obedience to a resolution of the Senate of the third March, 1817.

  • United States. Department of State.
Date:
1821
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Report upon weights and measures / By John Quincy Adams, Secretary of State of the United States. Prepared in obedience to a resolution of the Senate of the third March, 1817. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    21/272 (page 11)
    The standard of linear measure for each individual being in himself, those of no two individuals will be the same. At different times, the same individual will use different measures, according to the several purposes for which they will be wanted. In domestic society, the measures adaptable to the persons of the husband, of the wife, and of the children, are not the same; nor will the idea of reducing them all to one common standard press itself upon their wants, until the multiplication of families gives rise to the intercourse, exchanges, and government, of civil society. Common standards will then he assumed from the person of some distinguished individual; but acci- dental circumstances, rather than any law of nature, will determine whether identity or proportion will he the character of their unifor- mity. If, pursuing the first and original dictate of nature, the cubit should be assumed as the standard of linear measure for the use of the hand, and the pace for the measure of motion, or linear measure upon earth, there will he two units of long measure; one for the mea- sure of matter, and another for the measure of motion. Nor will they be reducible to one; because neither the cubit nor the pace is an aliquot part or a multiple of the other. But, should the discovery have been made, that the foot is at once an aliquot part of the pace, for the mensuration of motion, and of the ell and fathom, for the men- suration of matter, the foot will be made the common standard mea- sure for both : and, thenceforth, there will be only one standard unit of long measure, and its uniformity will be that of identity. Thus, in tracing the theoretic history of weights and measures to their original elements in the nature and the necessities of man, we have found linear measure with individual existence, superficial, ca- pacious, itinerary measure, and decimal arithmetic, with domestic so- ciety ; weights and common standards, with civil society; money, coins, and all the elements of uniform metrology, with civil govern- ment and law; arising in successive and parallel progression to- gether. When weights and measures present themselves to the contempla- tion of the legislator, and call for the interposition of law, the first and most prominent idea which occurs to him is that of uniformity: his first object is to embody them into a system, and his first wish, to reduce them to one universal common standard. His purposes are uniformity, permanency, universality; one standard to be the same for all persons and all purposes, and to continue the same forever. These purposes, however, require powers which no legislator has hitherto been found to possess. The power of the legislator is limit- ed by the extent of his territories, and the numbers of his people* His principle of universality, therefore, cannot be made, by the mere agency of his power, to extend beyond the inhabitants of his own possessions. The power of the legislator is limited over time. He is liable to change his own purposes. He is not infallible : he is liable to mistake the means of effecting his own objects. He is not immortal: his successor accedes to his power, with different views, different opinions, and perhaps different principles. The legislator