July 27th, on motion of Mr. Sumner, these were taken up and passed.
MR. PRESIDENT,—At another time I might be induced to go into this question at some length; but now, in these latter days of a weary session, and under these heats, I feel that I must be brief. And yet I could not pardon myself, if I did not undertake, even at this time, to present a plain and simple account of the great change which is now proposed.
There is something captivating in the idea of weights and measures common to all the civilized world, so that, in this at least, the confusion of Babel may be overcome. Kindred is that other idea of one money; and both are forerunners, perhaps, of the grander idea of one language for all the civilized world. Philosophy does not despair of this triumph at some distant day; but a common system of weights and measures and a common system of money are already within the sphere of actual legislation. The work has already begun; and it cannot cease until the great object is accomplished.
If the United States come tardily into the circle of nations recognizing a common system of weights and measures, I confess that I have pleasure in recalling the historic fact that at a very early day this important subject was commended to Congress. Washington, in a speech to the First Congress, touched the key-note, when he used the word “uniformity” in connection with this subject. “Uniformity,” he said, “in the currency, weights, and measures of the United States is an object of great importance, and will, I am persuaded, be duly attended to.”[51] Then again in a speech to the next Congress he went further, in expressing a desire for “a standard at once invariable and universal.”[52] Here he foreshadowed a system common to the civilized world. It is for us now to recognize the standard he thus sententiously described. All hail to a standard “invariable and universal”!
I shall not occupy time in developing the history of these efforts on the part of our Government; but I cannot forbear mentioning that Mr. Jefferson, while Secretary of State, made an elaborate report, where he proposed “reducing every branch to the same decimal ratio already established in the coins, and thus bringing the calculation of the principal affairs of life within the arithmetic of every man who can multiply and divide plain numbers.”[53] Here is an essential element in the common system we seek to establish. This was in 1790, when France was just beginning those efforts which ended at last in the establishment of the metric system. The subject was revived at different times in Congress without definite result. President Madison, in his annual message of 1816, called attention to it in the following words:—
“The great utility of a standard fixed in its nature and founded on the easy rule of decimal proportions is sufficiently obvious. It led the Government at an early stage to preparatory steps for introducing it; and a completion of the work will be a just title to the public gratitude.”[54]
Out of this recommendation originated that call of the Senate which drew forth the masterly report of John Quincy Adams on the whole subject of weights and measures, where learning, philosophy, and prophetic aspiration vie with each other. After reviewing whatever had appeared in the past, and subjecting it all to careful examination, he says of the French metric system, then only an experiment:—
“This system approaches to the ideal perfection of uniformity applied to weights and measures, and, whether destined to succeed or doomed to fail, will shed unfading glory upon the age in which it was conceived and upon the nation by which its execution was attempted and has been in part achieved.”[55]
This was in 1821, when the metric system, already invented, was still struggling for adoption in France.
This brief sketch shows how from the beginning the National Government has been looking to a system common to the civilized world. And now this aspiration seems about to be fulfilled. The bills before you have already passed the other House; if they become laws, as I trust, they will be the practical commencement of the “new order.”