ADDRESS OF SIR WILLIAM HAMILTON. 
lv 
unconsciously been long amassing, and which concern her as the coun¬ 
try of Newton and the maritime nation of the world. For the spirit 
of exactness is diffusive, and so is the spirit of negligence. The close¬ 
ness, indeed, of the existing agreement between the tables and the ob¬ 
servations of astronomers is so great, that it cannot easily be conceived 
by persons unfamiliar with that science. No theory has ever had so 
brilliant a fortune, or ever so outrun experience, as the theory of gra¬ 
vitation has done. But if astronomers ever grow weary, and faintly 
turn back from the task which science and nature command, of con¬ 
stantly continuing to test even this great theory by observation, if they 
put any limit to the search, which nature has not put, or are content to 
leave any difference unaccounted for between the testimony of sense 
and the results of mathematical deduction, then will they not only be¬ 
come gradually negligent in the discharge of their other and more prac¬ 
tical duties ; and their observations themselves, and their nautical alma¬ 
nacs, will then degenerate instead of improving, to the peril of navies 
and of honour; but also they will have done what in them lay, to mu¬ 
tilate outward nature, and to rob the mind of its heritage. For, be we 
well assured that no such search as this, were it only after the smallest 
of those treasures which wave after wave may dash up on the shore of 
the ocean of truth, is ever unrewarded. And small as those five seconds 
may appear, which stir the mind of Bessel, and are to him a prophecy 
of some knowledge undiscovered, perhaps unimagined by man, we may 
remember that when Kepler was “feeling” as he said, “the walls of 
ignorance, ere yet he reached the brilliant gate of truth,” he thus ex¬ 
pressed himself respecting discrepancies which were not larger for the 
science of his time :—“ These eight minutes of difference, which can¬ 
not be attributed to the errors of so exact an observer as Tycho, are 
about to give us the means of reforming the whole of astronomy.” We 
indeed cannot dream that gravitation shall ever become obsolete ; per¬ 
haps it is about to receive some new and striking confirmation; but 
Newton never held that the law of the inverse square was the only law 
of the action of body upon body; and the question is, whether some 
other law or mode of action, coexisting with this great and principal 
one, may not manifest some sensible effect in the heavens to the deli¬ 
cacy of modern observation, and especially of modern reduction. It 
was worthy of the British Association to interest themselves in such a 
subject: it was worthy of British rulers to accede promptly to such a 
request. 
I have been drawn into too much length by the consideration of this 
instance of the external effects of our Association, to be able to do 
more than allude to the kindred instance of the publication of the ob- 
