ADDRESS OF SIR WILLIAM HAMILTON. 
liii 
be used in the reduction of certain Greenwich observations, the result 
of which recommendation is noticed in the volume before us. In all 
that I have hitherto said respecting this Association, I have spoken 
almost solely of its internal effects, or those which it produces on the 
minds and acts of its own members. But it is manifest that such a so¬ 
ciety cannot fail to have also effects which are external, and that its 
influence must extend even beyond its own wide circle of members. 
It not only helps to diffuse through the community at large a respect 
and interest for the pursuits of scientific men, but ventures even to 
approach the throne, and to lay before the King the expression of the 
wishes of this his Parliament of science, on whatever subject of national 
importance belongs to science only, and is unconnected with the pre¬ 
dominance in the state of any one political party. It was judged that 
the reduction of the astronomical observations on the sun and moon, 
and planets, which had been accumulating under the care of Bradley 
and his successors, at the Royal and national Observatory of Green¬ 
wich, since the middle of the last century, but which, except so far as 
foreign astronomers might use them, had lain idle and useless till now, 
to the great obstruction of the advance of practical as well as theoreti¬ 
cal science, was a subject of that national importance, and worthy of 
such an approach to the highest functionaries of the state. It hap¬ 
pened that I was not present when the propriety of making this appli¬ 
cation was discussed, so that I do not know whether the authority of 
Bessel was quoted. That authority has not at least been mentioned, 
to my knowledge, in any printed remarks upon the question, but as it 
bears directly and powerfully thereupon, you will permit me, perhaps, 
to occupy a few moments by citing it. 
Professor Bessel of Koenigsberg, who, for consummate union of 
theory and practice, must be placed in the very foremost rank, may be 
placed perhaps at the head of astronomers now living and now work¬ 
ing, published not long ago that classical and useful volume, the Tabulce 
Regiomontance , which I now hold in my hand. In the introduction to 
this volume of tables, Bessel remarks, that “ the present knowledge of 
the solar system has not made all the progress which might have been 
expected from the great number and goodness of the observations made 
on the sun, and moon, and planets, from the times of Bradley down. 
It may, indeed, be said with truth, that astronomical tables do not err 
now by so much as whole minutes from the heavens; but if those 
tables differ by more than five seconds now, after using all the present 
means of accurate reduction, from a well-observed opposition of a 
planet (for example), their error is as manifest and certain now as an 
error exceeding a minute was, in a former state of astronomy—and the 
