Journal of Geomancy vol. 2 no. 3, April 1978

{59}

ISRAELITISH METROLOGY; or,
FORGOTTEN IDEAS WHICH LIVE ON AS CURIOUS SURVIVALS TO-DAY

by Nigel Pennick

The British Israelites, though they still exist in a much truncated form to this day, once had a much greater prominence and influence over people’s ideas.  A century ago, numerous tracts circulated bearing such delicious titles as FORTY-SEVEN IDENTIFICATIONS OF THE BRITISH NATION WITH THE LOST TEN TRIBES OF ISRAEL, FOUNDED UPON FIVE HUNDRED SCRIPTURE PROOFS, or ENGLAND’S COMING GLORIES, BEING THE FOURTH PART OF THE IDENTIFICATIONS OF THE ENGLISH NATION WITH LOST ISRAEL.  These tracts, consisting of numerous pages of small close type, purported, by reference to the Bible, to show that the English (or British sometimes, the two seem to be interchangeable here) were, in reality, descended from the ancient Hebrew tribes which vanished at some time or other from the stage of history. 

At the time, the ascendancy of the British Empire and the seemingly unlimited power of Britain meshed well with the predictions and prophecies of the Bible concerning the future of the Hebrew race.  The stone which lies beneath the coronation chair in Westminster Abbey was taken literally as Jacob’s pillow, and as such was held to be a sign of the identity of the British Race with Lost Israel.  The question of this supposed identity was not merely held to be of academic interest, but a vital concern for the future well-being of Britain.  One of the most vociferous of the many exponents of this theory, Edward Hine, claimed that to prove the identity would produce no less than 27 favourable results, among them: 2. It will annihilate infidelity; 7. It will exalt us to the position of “the righteous nation”; 13. It will empty our prisons; 17. It will give us universal gladness and rejoicing; etc.  Fine effects indeed, especially as No. 27 was; It will lead to the satisfying of the travails of Christ’s soul, and prepare the way for His Second Advent. 

Within this milieu were many associated ideas.  One of them, derived initially from Sir Isaac Newton, was that the ancient Hebrew measures and the measures of Britain were identical, thus proving that the British were Israel (just as the Chinese use the Metric System today, proving that they are French!).  H.G. Wood’s piece elsewhere gives the evidence for this contention, though he was not, as far as is known, a British Israelite.  The concomitant idea, reversing the derivation of the measures, is that to abandon them is an affront to God Himself.  Thus the British Israelites vehemently opposed the introduction of the Metric System, which had been devised in Revolutionary France. 

It is not the intention of the author to argue the merits and demerits of the Metric System as opposed to the Imperial System, or indeed, any other of the myriad systems which were used in Europe and elsewhere before the general adoption of the Metre and its derivatives.  However, several arguments used even to this day originate with the British Israelitish propaganda of the 1870s, and it is interesting to consider them in their context. 

One of the less fortunate consequences of the theory was the fanaticism and belief in their total correctness which was engendered by the propaganda.  The celebrated Pyramidologist C. Piazzi Smyth, F.R.S.S., L. &. E., &c., Astronomer Royal for Scotland, was one of the most vociferous adherents of the Israelitish Metrology.  His tracts against the Metric System are classics of the genre.  The British Israelites of the period did not preach peace, love and mutual understanding.  On the contrary, fanatical ravings which, in the context of this century’s politics, seem frighteningly familiar, appear.  In FLASHES OF LIGHT (1871) Hine writes about Ireland.  He believed that the Irish were descended from the opponents of the ancient Hebrews, and were now ‘thorns in our sides’.  “These Nations, the Canaanites, the Hittites, … our forefathers were commissioned by God to exterminate, but they disobeyed God by failing to do so, therefore God in anger declared they should be left in our midst – that they should be left to prove Israel”. 

The “dying out” process, as Hine calls it, the word genocide having not yet been invented, was based on a quotation from Jeremiah (XXX, II), “Fear not, O Israel, for I am with thee, saith the Lord, to save thee; though I make a full end of all Nations whither I have scattered thee, yet I will not make a full end {60} of thee”.  To quote Hine “Now it is utterly impossible to identify Israel, unless this trait is being worked out in her history.  Israel must have immense colonies, and the aborigines must be dying out in them, or, the word of God is at fault, which is impossible.  … the ‘full end’ is an accomplished fact in England.  In Canada and the Hudson’s Bay Territory, the aborigines are decreasing year by year.  In Newfoundland, the last man died in 1858.  In America, the Indians are dying out.  … the Maories … are now only 50 000.  … the aborigines of Tasmania are all gone, not a solitary soul remains.  The same process is in operation with the Caffres of the Cape, and in many of our smaller settlements, like Newfoundland, the work is completed.  Denmark has Greenland, but the natives do not die out before them.  Holland has small settlements in the East, but the operation does not exist there.”

Frightening stuff in the light of the exterminations of the Armenians, the Jews, the Biafrans and millions of other unfortunates whose race didn’t fit at the time. 

Until the early 1870s, Germany was believed to have been part of ‘Lost Israel’, and it is here that an important factor in anti-Metrication becomes exposed to light.  Piazzi Smyth, in a letter to Hine published in FLASHES OF LIGHT, writes the following:–

Edinburgh, July, 1871.
“I have little to stand out for in defence of the present Germans, touching weights and measures; for in 1870, at the instance of the Prussian King, they adopted the permissive use of the Atheistical and Rationalistic French Metric System, and on January 1st, 1872, it is to be made compulsory to all Germans.  If they allow that, together with its consequent destruction of their national, or hereditary, or borrowed and copied Israelite Measures, of course I must consider them to have forfeited the claim to be true Israelites; and must consider them as the subject of the beast’s kingdom.  I remain, Yours very truly, C. Piazzi Smyth.”

Hine replied:–

“The proofs already supplied by the Astronomer Royal, that our own weights and measures are the same as in use by Israel in olden times … render it an impossible thing for England to displace them.  It simply cannot be done, though we have a few misguided M.P.s in our Commons foolishly given to change, who have attempted to alter, yet once let the country see that their movements are based upon ignorance, and doubtless they will be permitted to stay by their own firesides, or give up the folly and wickedness – wicked, because an insult to God”. 

Smyth’s reference to Germany becoming the “subject of the beast’s kingdom” is not merely a vitriolic idiom.  It has a direct reference to the British Israelitish belief that the Metric System was prophesied in the REVELATION of St. John the Divine.  According to this apocalyptic work, the Beast was to mark all of its followers.  Smyth took this mark to be the Metre.  “On one hand, indeed, we have already seen that unhappy French Nation, at their first Revolution, formally declare before High Heaven that there is no God, elevate man into God’s place, abolish for themselves the week of seven days, as well as the annual chronology by the Christian Era, and establish a new philosopher’s invention, called from its chief linear standard, the metrical system of weights and measures; of which system the very object and purpose was unblushingly stated before the French National Assembly of those days, to be, that as the metre was, after a certain manner though by no means so perfectly as the Sacred Cubit, “earth-commensurable”, each French Citizen would be enabled to say of his communal plot of ground, when measured in terms of that metre, “By so much am I a co-proprietor of the earth.” … “But meanwhile the evil leaven is working.  Although the last attempt by he communists in Paris, only a few months ago (The Paris Commune of 1871/l’an 79)* to again abolish the Christian Era and resuscitate the mode of reckoning years from the date of the first French Republic, was quenched in blood by men of their own nation, still the adoption of the weights and measures part of the {61} French metrical system, has strangely got the ear of half mankind.  Most of the philosophers of our day, ignorant of the excellent earth-commensurability of the Sacred Cubit, have been seduced by the French metre’s plausible claim to be the only earth-commensurable standard in existence … while the rulers of many kingdoms have bound themselves to the same human metre, and are pledged to make their respective peoples penally adopt it in all their transactions, both at home and abroad; indeed, they are so to proceed in all their future commercial treaties with other nations, “that all, both small and great, rich and poor, free and bond, shall receive that mark in their right hand or their forehead; and that no man might buy or sell, save he that had the mark, or the name of the beast, or the number of his name’ .”

*editor’s note.

Thus we have the identity of the metre with the mark of the beast, explained from the pen of Piazzi Smyth.  The hatred of the Metric system was derived not from its innovative nature but from the fact that it had been devised by a revolutionary atheist regime as a complete break with the past (in fact, Heinsch advanced evidence for its use in antiquity – see References). 

Modern tracts against the Metric system tend to be based upon this Smythian argument that the Metre itself, being ‘Atheistical and Rationalistic’, is an affront to God.  If one accepts that the premise is sound, then the argument must be accepted.  If however, it is seen in its context of British Israelite tracts of its time, it must be ranked with the ‘dying out identity’ and the ‘glory of the Turkoman’s overthrow’.  From a lengthy, McGonagall-like poem of that title, I will finish with one of its many verses:

The number ten, to its ninth power raised,
And multiplied by pyramidic height,
Gives a result at which we stand amazed –
“Our Earth’s true distance from the source of light”.
He who would cry “mere chance,” is simply crazed,
And should a pitying smile alone excite;
That truth to general man was then unknown –
Hence Philitis has inspiration shown.