e past,
national rivalries are introduced in a question that should rally the
good-will of all.

Well, gentlemen, I say that considerations of economy and of
established custom should not make us lose sight of the principles
which must be paramount in this question, and which alone can lead to
the universal acceptance and permanence of its settlement.
Furthermore, gentlemen, these motives of economy and of established
custom, which have been appealed to as a decisive argument, exist, it
is true, for the majority in behalf of which they have been put
forward, but exist for them only, and leave to us the whole burden of
change in customs, publications, and material.

Since the report considers us of so little weight in the scales, allow
me, gentlemen, to recall briefly the past and the present of our
hydrography, and for that purpose I can do no better than to quote
from a work that has been communicated to me, and which emanates from
one of our most learned hydrographers. "France," he says, "created
more than two centuries ago the most ancient nautical ephemerides in
existence. She was the first to conceive and execute the great
geodetic operations which had for their object the construction of
civil and military maps and the measurement of arcs of the meridian in
Europe, America, and Africa. All these operations were and are based
on the Paris meridian. Nearly all the astronomical tables used at the
present time by the astronomers and the navies of the whole world are
French, and calculated for the Paris meridian. As to what most
particularly concerns shipping, the accurate methods now used by all
nations for hydrographic surveys are of French origin, and our charts,
all reckoned from the meridian of Paris, bear such names as those of
Bougainville, La Perouse, Fleurieu, Borda, d'Entrecasteaux, Beautemps,
Beaupre, Duperrey, Dumont d'Urville, Daussy, to quote only a few among
those who are not living.

"Our actual hydrographic collections amount to more than 4,000 charts.
By striking off those which the progress of explorations have rendered
useless, there still remain about 2,600 charts in use. Of this number
more than half represent original French surveys, a large part of
which foreign nations have reproduced. Amongst the remainder, the
general charts are the result of discussions undertaken in the Bureau
of the Marine, by utilizing all known documents, French as well as
foreign, and there are relatively few which