useful only for foreign commerce. This silver one-yen will be the legal tender in payment of local taxes and of import and export duties. It will also be the legal tender in any commercial transaction in the open ports. This silver one-yen will, however, not be the legal tender in any other place than the open ports, and will not be used for the payment of internal revenue of any kind, nor will it be lawful currency in the interior; though, by mutual agreement, any persons may use it to any amount throughout Japan. In the payment of the import and export duties, the comparative rate of the gold yen to the silver one-yen, will for the present be this: One hundred (100) silver one yen to be equivalent to one hundred and one (101) gold yen." Standard weights. 504. Standard weights shall be prepared for testing the coins issued by the several mints, including weights exactly representing each of the several gold and silver coins, made by this Code a legal tender in payment of debts. These weights shall be carefully compared and exactly verified by an international commission, composed of experts appointed by the governments of the nations parties to this Code, each government appointing at least one and not more than two delegates; such commission to assemble at a convenient time and place to be agreed upon between the several goverments. The weights so verified shall be deposited in the several mints, with such provision for their safe-keeping as may secure them effectually from falsification, and also, as far as may be, from deterioration by exposure or use. There shall futhermore be made copies of these standard weights for the ordinary uses of the several mints, which copies shall, at least once a year, be carefully compared with the standard weights and duly verified ; and these standard weights shall be used for no other purpose whatever, but to make such comparisons and verifications. Scrutiny of the coinage. 505. At every delivery of coins made by the coining officers of any nation to the public treasury of the same, there shall be taken indiscriminately, by the treasurer or other officer duly authorized, a suffi cient number of pieces of each variety of coin deliv ered, to be reserved for assay and scrutiny; and the coins so taken shall be carefully enclosed and sealed, with a label stating their descriptions, numbers and value, and deposited in a strong box or safe so secured that it cannot be opened except by the concurrence of the superintendent of the mint and the officer representing the treasury. At a suitable time after the close of the mint operations of each year, the coins so reserved shall be subjected to scrutiny by a commission of experts to be appointed by the government,' who shall, after thorough examination, make report as to the conformity of those pieces to the standards of fineness and weight. Should there be found a deviation from the standar's greater than that which is allowed by the provisions of this Code, all officers implicated in the error shall be thenceforward disqualified from holding their respective offices, or subjected to such other penalty as may be provided by the municipal law of the State to which the mint appertains; except that, if, in view of the circumstances, it shall appear that the error has not been caused by fraud, neglect, or incapacity, the penalty shall not be inflicted." 1 Act of Congress, U. S., January 18, 1837, § 27, 32. Coins may be called in by proclamation. 506. A nation may call in the coins of any date or denomination issued by it; in which case, after public proclamation shall have been made of such recall, the coins specified in the proclamation shall cease everywhere to be a legal tender. But in every such case, provision shall be made for redeeming the coins at their actual value, and for furnishing current coin instead thereof, at the capitals or principal financial centres of the several countries within which they have been in circulation. Uncurrent coins may be destroyed. 507. When any gold coin of a denomination made current by the provisions of this Code shall be below the standard weight by an amount greater than the largest deviation allowed by the same, or when any coin shall have been called in by proclamation,' it shall be the duty of every person to whom such coin may be tendered in any payment, to cut, break or deface such coin; and the person tendering it shall bear the loss. If any coin cut, broken or defaced, in pursuance of this article, shall prove not to be below the current weight, or not to have been called in by proclamation, the person cutting, breaking or defacing the same shall receive the same in payment according to its denomination. Any dispute arising under this article may be determined by a summary proceeding, to be prescribed by each nation for itself.' 1 British Coinage Act, 33 Vict., ch. 10, § 7. Coins of base metal not to form a part of the international currency. 508. No coin or token of copper, bronze, nickel, or any other base metal or mixture of metals, which may be issued by the government of any nation to subserve the purposes of money, shall be a legal tender for payment of any amount, in any place within the jurisdiction of any nation except that by which it was issued. The systems of weights and measures in actual use among different peoples, stand to each other in no simple numerical relations; and the transformation of values from one of these systems to another, is ordinarily an irksome and time-consuming operation. No common system could therefore be substituted for all these, which would not stand to them or to most of them in the same relation of inexact commensurability in which they stand to each other. But there is hardly a transaction of practical life into which considerations of weight, or measure, or both, do not enter; and such is the constitution of the human mind that clear conceptions of quantities of any kind are unattainable, except by reference to unit values, which education or long use has made familiar. It matters not how thoroughly we may have been instructed in the denominations of weight and measure employed by other peoples, or how earnestly we may have endeavored, by the study of their visible types placed immediately before our eyes, to acquire the power of directly conceiving positive values, when expressed in these experience teaches us that our notions thus acquired continue long to be vague and inexact; and that, in order to render them definite, intelligible and satisfactory, we involuntarily seek to transform them, by reductions founded upon relations which, if not true, are at least approximate, into values which long habit has taught us to associate directly with determinate quantities of the objects valued. The substitution, therefore, anywhere, of a new system of weights and measures for the system actually in use, founded as the new system must be, if it is to become a common and international system, upon a basis which will generally bear no simple numerical relation to the basis of the existing system, will impose upon an entire generation such a burden of inconvenience, daily and hourly felt, as to require for its justification very clear demonstration that the advantages to be secured by the substitution are much more than an offset to this very serious inconvenience. And as there are many minds in which considerations of great public benefit, or even of great individual benefit which is only prospective, will after all weigh little in comparison with a much less amount of present and personal inconvenience, it is inevitable that every proposition for the unification of the systems of weights and measures in use in the world, no matter what may be the basis proposed for the new system, or what may be its theoretic simplicity, will meet with determined opposition in many quarters. But the inconvenience here referred to, which consists in interference with men's established habits of thought, is not the only one which necessarily results from the abrogation of a system of weights and measures after it has been long in use, and the substitution in its place of a new system, even though it be a greatly better one. That inconvenience can be but temporary, and can affect, at farthest, but a single generation. To abolish suddenly the metric system of weights and measures in France, at the present day, would be to compel the French people to pass a second time through the same painful struggle with established associations as that which attended its original introduction. But apart from this, every system of weights and measures long in use becomes inevitably entangled in, or incorporated with, the operations of industry or the material interests of men, to the extent that it constitutes at length an element in the actual value of many descriptions of property. The disadvantage which must arise from this source, in case of the abolition of the system, is one of a more permanent, and apart from its permanence, of a more serious nature than any which can spring from the mere violence done to mental associations. The artificial divisions of landed property are among the things least liable to change among men; and the boundary lines which mark these divisions are naturally expressed, whenever that is possible, in integral numbers of the unit of measure employed. The introduction of a new unit having no simple relation to the first, will make all these values fractional. And the importance of this consideration increases in proportion as the dimensions of the divisions are less, and the absolute value of the surface measured is greater. These are the conditions which exist in regard to the real estate of cities, where they are true as well of buildings as of the ground on which the buildings are erected. Again, the dimensions of railways, and of the locomotives and other rolling stock used in operating them, have been determined in conformity with the existing systems of measurement; and all these too become fractional numbers when the system is changed. The same thing must occur in every department of mechanical manufacture, where both the objects produced, and the machinery by which they are produced, will cease, with a change of system, to possess dimensions capable of being integrally expressed. When we consider into how many details of manufacturing art the exactest measurements enter as elements of vital importance, and reflect at the same time what vast sums have been invested in the various forms of mechanical production, and made dependent for their returns of profit upon the stability of existing systems of measurement, we shall perceive that the sudden introduction of others, and their immediate extension to every department of industry as well as commerce, would seriously and injuriously affect some of the most important springs of public and of private wealth. If, however, in view of all the possible consequences which may and must result from the substitution of a system of weights and measures uniform for all nations, in place of the numerous, diverse, and greatly incongruous systems at present in use, it shall appear that there are permanent and lasting advantages to be secured to mankind by the change, sufficient to outweigh the temporary inconvenience and possible confusion |