CHEY, Delegate of Great Britain. It seems to me that the
Congress having accepted the resolution to which reference was made a
little while ago, adopting the universal day, it is incumbent upon us,
in the nature of things, to determine when that universal day shall
begin. The resolution presented by the Delegate of the United States
proposes to define how that universal day shall be reckoned; that is,
when it shall begin and how its hours shall be counted.

It was explained by him that the difference between his proposition
and the proposition made at Rome consisted in altering the time of the
commencement of the so-called universal day from noon at Greenwich to
the commencement of the civil day. Certainly what Commander SAMPSON
just said is perfectly true. The adoption of this so-called universal
day will not interfere in the smallest degree with any purpose for
which time is employed in civil life. The two objects are entirely
distinct. It is obvious that the conception of the necessity of having
a universal day has arisen from the more clear conception of the fact
that time on the globe is essentially local; that the time upon any
given line (supposing it to be a meridian) is not the time at the same
moment on either side of that line, however small the departure from
it may be; and for scientific accuracy it has, therefore, been thought
desirable to have some absolute standard to which days and hours can
be referred. Up to the present time it has been the practice to say,
in an indefinite way, that an event happened, say, on the 1st of
January at 6 o'clock in the morning, and such a statement of the time
has been considered sufficient; but, in truth, this does not
completely describe a definite epoch of time, for if the event
occurred at Madrid and was so reported, that report would not
designate the same moment as a report of an event which was described
to have occurred at precisely the same date and hour at Greenwich, or
Rome, or Washington. What is required and desired is that we should
have an absolute and definite standard for reckoning events of a
certain description, for which complete precision is desirable. I
consider, therefore, that the Delegate of Spain leads us astray in the
proposition which he has offered, by which he virtually proposes to
nullify the resolution already adopted. We have already decided that a
universal day was expedient, and it is for the Conference to settle
now when that universal