The adoption of the metric system by the United States will go far to complete the circle by which this great improvement will be assured to mankind. Here is a new agent of civilization, to be felt in all the concerns of life, at home and abroad. It will be hardly less important than the Arabic numerals, by which the operations of arithmetic are rendered common to all nations. It will help undo the primeval confusion of which the Tower of Babel was the representative.
As the first practical step to this great end, I ask the Senate to sanction the bills which have already passed the other House, and which I have reported from the special committee on the metric system. By these enactments the metric system will be presented to the American people, and will become an approved instrument of commerce. It will not be forced into use, but will be left for the present to its own intrinsic merits. Meanwhile it must be taught in schools. Our arithmetics must explain it. They who have already passed a certain period of life may not adopt it; but the rising generation will embrace it, and ever afterwards number it among the choicest possessions of an advanced civilization.
SPEECH IN THE SENATE, ON A JOINT RESOLUTION AUTHORIZING A CONTRACT WITH VINNIE REAM FOR A STATUE OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN, JULY 27, 1866.
July 27th, on the last evening of the session, while the galleries were thronged, Mr. Conness, of California, called for the consideration of the joint resolution, which had already passed the House of Representatives, “authorizing a contract with Vinnie Ream for a statue of Abraham Lincoln.” The following incident then occurred.
MR. SUMNER. Before that is taken up, I wish, with the consent of the Senator, that I might be allowed to put a joint resolution on its passage.
MR. CONNESS. This will only occupy a moment.
MR. CONNESS. Not, if you do not debate it.
MR. CONNESS. Let the Senator debate it now. I shall not give way, in that case.
MR. SUMNER. I merely wish to put a joint resolution upon its passage that will take no time.
Mr. Chandler, of Michigan, then asked Mr. Conness “to give way for a moment” to allow him to call up----Here he was arrested by the answer, “I cannot give way to the Senator, after having refused another Senator.” The joint resolution was then read:--