When France, at the end of the last century, instituted the metre, did she proceed thus?  Did she, as a measure of economy and in order to change nothing in her customs, propose to the world the “Pied de Roi” as a unit of measure?  You know the facts.  The truth is, everything with us was overthrown—­both the established methods and instruments for measurement; and the measure adopted being proportioned only to the dimensions of the earth, is so entirely detached from everything French that in future centuries the traveller who may search the ruins of our cities may inquire what people invented the metrical measure that chance may bring under his eyes.

Permit me to say that it is thus a reform should be made and becomes acceptable.  It is by setting the example of self-sacrifice; it is by complete self-effacement in any undertaking, that opposition is disarmed and true love of progress is proved.

I now hasten to say that I am persuaded that the proposition voted for at Rome was neither made nor suggested by England, but I doubt whether it would render a true service to the English nation if it be agreed to.  An immense majority of the navies of the world navigate with English charts; that is true, and it is a practical compliment to the great maritime activity of that nation.  When this freely admitted supremacy shall be transformed into an official and compulsory supremacy, it will suffer the vicissitudes of all human power, and that institution, (the common meridian,) which by its nature is of a purely scientific nature, and to which we would assure a long and certain future, will become the object of burning competition and jealousy among nations.

All this shows, gentlemen, how much wiser it would be to take for the origin of terrestrial longitude a point chosen from geographical considerations only.  Upon the globe, nature has so sharply separated the continent on which the great American nation has arisen, that there are only two solutions possible from a geographical point of view, both of them very natural.

The first solution would consist in returning, with some small modification, to the solution of the ancients, by placing our meridian near the Azores; the second by throwing it back to that immense expanse of water which separates America from Asia, where on its northern shores the New World abuts on the old.

These two solutions may be discussed; this has been often done, and again quite recently, by one of our ablest geologists, M. de Chancourtois.

Each of these meridians combine the fundamental conditions which geography demands and upon which there has always been an agreement when national meridians are set aside from the discussion.  As to the determination of the position of the point which may be adopted, the present excellent astronomical methods will give it with a degree of exactness as great as that which geography requires.