198 Prof. Lovering on the American Prime Meridian. 
affected in the least degree by the proposed change, we beg leave 
to add a few words regarding an American meridian, as connected 
with our national honor or independence. Did we believe it true 
that the honor or independence of the United States were in the 
least degree affected by counting our longitude from a meridian 
line passing through an English Observatory, we would readily 
encounter all the evils of a change; but we do not believe that 
any such taint rests upon this practice. We received this mode 
of counting our longitude, as we received our language, our arts, 
our names, our very blood, from England, our parent state. " 
meridian of Greenwich belongs to us, in common with the Eng- 
lish nation, by right of inheritance from our fathers, who helped 
to rear and support the observatory first established there. Our 
property in this is more clear than in the compass, the chronometer, 
and many other instruments of navigation; and the same pfinci- 
ple of an ideal independence, which shall. require us to abandon 
the meridian of Greenwich, must require us to abandon most of 
our instruments of art, science, literature, and even our language, 
for we hold them all by the same tenure; and the question will 
come to be, not what we shall resign, but what we shall have 
left. Permit us further to observe, that this state of ideal inde- 
pendence, in marking the longitude, will not be at all attained 
by the change proposed. It is intended by Lieut. Davis to make 
the prime meridian completely dependent upon Greenwich. It is 
not to be the meridian of any point arbitrarily assumed at New 
Orleans, but a line as near as possible to 90 degrees west of Green- 
wich, which, by a coincidence purely accidental, passes through 
or near New Orleans. Indeed, the necessities for a continued 
dependence upon foreign observatories for observations for half a 
century is distinctly avowed. Without this foreign aid, the pro- 
posed almanac could not be prepared. The change, then, will 
be merely nominal. We shall not reckon our longitude really 
from New Orleans, but from a point 90 degrees west of Green- 
wich ; and the longitude of Washington, for example, will not be 
so completely described by saying that it is 12 degrees 56 minutes 
east of New Orleans, as by calling it 12 degrees 56 minutes east 
of a meridian 90 degrees west of Greenwich. 
“In conclusion, and after a review of the whole subject, we can 
rceive no reason for abandoning the meridian of Greenwich, or 
any other of the common property of civilization. If the use of 
the instruments of art or the methods of science, introduced by 
other nations, be beneficial to us, the most high-minded and truly 
independent and national spirit would seem to dictate, not that 
our practice and usages should be changed, but that we should, 
by the cultivation and advancement of branches of knowledge, 
where our efforts can be useful, repay to mankind the advantages 
which we have received from the common stock of civilization.” 
