We think, gentlemen, that if this question of the unification of longitude is again taken up after so many unsuccessful attempts to settle it as are recorded in history, there will be no chance of its final solution unless it be treated upon an exclusively geographical basis, and that at any cost all national competition should be set aside.  We do not advocate any particular meridian.  We put ourselves completely aside in the debate, and thus place ourselves in a position of far greater freedom for expressing our opinion, and discussing the question exclusively in view of the interests affected by the proposed reform.

The history of geography shows us a great number of attempts to establish a uniformity of longitude, and when we look for the reasons which have caused those attempts (many of which were very happily conceived) to fail, we are struck with the fact that it appears due to two principal causes—­one of a scientific and the other of a moral nature.  The scientific cause was the incapacity of the ancients to determine exactly the relative positions of different points on the globe, especially if it was a question of an island far from a continent, and which consequently could not be connected with that continent by itinerary measurements.  For example, the first meridian of Marinus of Tyre and Ptolemy, placed on the Fortunate Isles, in spite of its being so well chosen at the western extremity of the then known world, could not continue to be used on account of the uncertainty of the point of departure.  That much to be regretted obstacle caused the method to be changed.  It became necessary to fall back on the continent.  But then, in place of a single common origin of longitude indicated by nature, the first meridians were fixed at capitals of countries, at remarkable places, at observatories.  The second cause to which I just now alluded, the cause of a moral nature—­national pride—­has led to the multiplication of geographical starting-points where the nature of things would have required, on the contrary, their reduction to a single one.

In the seventeenth century, Cardinal Richelieu, in view of this confusion, desired to take up again the conception of Marinus of Tyre, and assembled at Paris French and foreign men of science, and the famous meridian of the Island of Ferro was the result of their discussions.

Here, gentlemen, we find a lesson which should not be lost sight of.  This meridian of Ferro, which at first had the purely geographical and neutral character which could alone establish and maintain it as an international first meridian, was deprived of its original characteristic by the geographer Delisle, who, to simplify the figures, placed it at 20 degrees in round numbers west of Paris.  This unfortunate simplification abandoned entirely the principle of impersonality.  It was no longer then an independent meridian; it was the meridian of Paris disguised.  The consequences were soon felt.  The meridian of Ferro, which has subsequently been considered as a purely French meridian, aroused national susceptibilities, and thus lost the future which was certainly in store for it if it had remained as at first defined.  This was a real misfortune for geography.  Our maps, while being perfected, would have preserved a common unit of origin, which, on the contrary, has altered more and more.